


Blind To Everything But You

by ladyiszy



Category: Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015)
Genre: (Low Key tho), (These Two Are So Clueless), 5 Times, Body Worship, Day Dreaming, F/M, Fantasy, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Hurt/Comfort, Making Out, Mouth Kink, Oral Sex, Pining, Slow Burn, Teasing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-26
Updated: 2016-01-26
Packaged: 2018-05-16 09:39:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 24,486
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5823679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladyiszy/pseuds/ladyiszy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Eggsy Unwin is a (beautiful) menace, and Roxy should know better than to waste her time with such things. But one close call is all it takes to finally crumble the last of her hesitation.</p><p>It takes her five years.</p><p>(Or, the FOUR times Roxy nearly kissed Eggsy, and the ONE time she finally does.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blind To Everything But You

**Author's Note:**

> Hi everyone! So, there's a _serious_ lack of Reggsy fics out there at the moment (and Reggsy love, honestly) so I figured I'd try my luck at writing something out! I've had this idea for such a long time, and since I'm such a fan of Thirsty/Pining!Roxy, I decided to see if I can write it all out. Just an FYI, I've not written a fic properly in literally years, so be gentle! 
> 
> Sorry this is so long; I got a bit ahead of myself with this. 
> 
> Special thanks to my dear partner-in-sinning, Evelyn, for proofreading this and helping me out with writing! 
> 
> Enjoy!
> 
> Edit: Thank you SO much to the lovely Dev [(cxllmeroxy over on tumblr) ](http://www.roxymorton.com/post/140622992811/blind-to-everything-but-you-by-ladyiszy)for making this lovely edit based off the fic!

**I.** **AT THE POOL :**

It hurts even thinking about him, let alone _looking_ at him.

Eggsy surfaces from the water in—what looks like to her—slow motion. He looks like a cliché, like a _Bond girl_ from the films, and she can’t quite tell if he’s taking the piss or not.

Roxy watches him with a rather embarrassing intensity from the other side of the Kingsman pool, regardless, not even pretending to be the least bit subtle about it.

 _Doesn’t matter, anyway_. It’s just them. Everybody else has gone out to town.

Water splashes outwards in all directions as he moves. She watches as he arches his head backwards and aims it up towards the clear, blue sky, soaking in the summer sun with a closed-mouth smile on his face.

To add to the _Bond-girl-emerging-from-the-water_ cliché, he even smooths his sopping wet hair back down with his hands, slowly, and with a deliberate ease.

Eggsy opens his mouth for air, and suddenly she feels winded. Her breath catches in her throat when she sees him do that—when she watches the muscles of his neck tighten and relax, and when she sees his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down. It makes her feel unsteady.

His mouth is shiny and wet, thanks to the water, and because they’ve been in there for so long, his lips have turned to a delightful baby pink colour. Even from her distance, at the other side of the pool, she can see how plush and soft they look right now.

It’s nearly enough for her to begin paddling over to him for a closer look.

But she doesn’t do that.

She’d give anything to kiss him, though, she knows that for sure. Even just once would be fine with her.

She just wants to see what it would be like, what it would feel like with him, how he would be.

See if the bravado fits the reality.

She reckons one kiss would do her some good. For one thing, it gives her a chance to finally get him out of her head. And for another, she’d get a kiss out of it. It’s been such an _awfully_ long time since the last time.

Eggsy’s too wrapped up in soaking in some more sun to even notice her staring. Or, at least, he isn’t giving the impression that he knows. If he does, he’s doing a _fine_ job at ignoring her. And if he _is_ ignoring it, then she’s thankful. She’d be mortified if he caught her.

Roxy smiles when she sees the grin on his face widen. He’s happy, she can tell. And he’s thankful for the break from training, that’s crystal clear to her. It’s been _go, go, go_ for weeks now that it’s good to finally take a moment to breathe and have fun. Eggsy practically dragged her to the pool the moment Merlin dismissed them all for a day of free-time. Today’s been the only sunny and warm day for London in _weeks_.

Eggsy had been so pumped to take the pool that during the morning debrief, he had shuffled closer to her, more than usual. She even felt his fingers straying over the skin of her wrist—hidden from sight, of course, but she still felt them—and ready to take a hold of her the moment they were let off. 

He was like a little kid.

It’d been so cute to her that she found herself biting her lower lip to stop herself from smiling visibly.

The feeling of his fingers straying over her skin just over an hour ago hasn’t left her just yet. The memory makes her smile again a little. She can still feel them—the rough pads of his fingers but the gentleness of the touch; the warmth of his skin against her cold that made goose-bumps appear on her arms and that made the hairs stand on end. There was a childish playfulness to his touch, and her heart always feels like sinking whenever she goes back to the detail—like they were childhood friends on the playground, laughing and snickering, sharing secrets and jokes that were wholly their own.

No one else there had mattered one bit as long as they were with one another.

Roxy sags, and as though on auto-pilot, she begins to sink down. And she doesn’t stop until her nostrils level with the water, floating just above. Her eyes never leave him, and she figures she must look like a hawk watching him how she is. But he hasn’t noticed her. He’s still too caught up in enjoying the moment.

There’s something in the way he shakes the water away and runs a hand down his face to wipe off the excess that’s getting to her. She can’t quite figure out what it is about the gestures, but it tugs on something in her. Her mouth parts slightly on its own accord at that.

Water rushes into her mouth, all in one go, and it’s like she’s already forgotten about being half submerged in the water. The surprise is enough to drag her back into reality—the much more _sensible_ reality.  

Roxy’s legs kick beneath the water, and her head shakes as she tries to get rid of it all. Her head aches as chlorine floods her system, clouding her mind. She struggles to keep upright with all the fuss.  

Roxy keeps her eyes closed as she tries to pull herself back, to recover from not just the water and chlorine, but from the sight and thought of him. Her chest aches and burns from all the coughing and shaking, and her head feels tight, like a wound-up coil. But in the far distance, carried by the sudden wind, she hears someone laughing— _him_ laughing, specifically. It could only be him. She could recognise that laugh anywhere.

Her shoulders drop when she hears the sound, mortification creeping up on her now that he’s switched his attention from soaking in some sun to her. _Is he laughing at me?_ She wonders at first, but then another voice in her head tells her that _yes, he most definitely is._ And she mutters a curse, one only she can hear.

Roxy grunts and runs a hand down her face to wipe off the rest of the water. The loose strands of her hair, fallen from her ponytail, curl into themselves and stick onto her cheeks as she opens her eyes—all red and strained and dry as they are. She finds him staring at her from the other side of the pool when she opens them, and she sees he’s not laughing anymore. He’s still, but he’s smiling at her, a goofy kind of smile.

It’s a half-smile, with his lips parted in amusement and with only one corner lifted up—a lovely, little lazy smile that softens his entire face and makes him look younger.  And he’s _glowing,_ she finds, when she sees him looking at her like that. But maybe it’s just the light doing that to him. It’s a beautiful day, after all.

As much as she loves the sight, it all feels like a bit of a low blow to the stomach.

All the happiness makes his eyes crinkle at the sides, squinting delightfully to see past the brightness of the sun and over to her. In the light, the colour of his eyes shift between green and light blue hues, and even seem to sparkle, from what she can see, reflecting off the diamond sharp shine of the water.  

A gentle heat spreads over her cheeks and her bare shoulders. She’s not quite sure if it’s sunburn or if it’s her body reacting to him, but it feels good, regardless. It feels _good._ She likes the warmth.

Roxy doesn’t think she’s ever seen him looking that happy before, that at peace. Granted, they’ve only known each other for a few months, but they know each other well enough by now.

 _And he’s looking at you,_ a voice reminds her. But it embarrasses her so much that she has to shake it off.

“Alright, Rox?” Eggsy calls out, loud enough so she can hear. And there’s a cheeky edge to it, like he already knows the answer and now he’s just taking the piss again. But nevertheless, there’s a hint of concern to it. “The water’s gone to your head, has it?”

Her breathing is shaky and her cheeks are still pink with all the embarrassment. For someone who knows how to cover that sort of thing up, she’s doing a _rubbish_ job at it now. She’s been trained to cover stuff like this up, but now she can’t seem to remember a bloody bit of it. _Just my luck._

“Yeah, a bit.” Roxy manages to grit out, finally, chagrined.

“Yeah, you’ll be ‘right.” He says before he lets out a chuckle, and _God_ , she thinks, _does he ever close his bloody mouth?_ It’s been hanging open nearly the whole time in his amusement, all soft and cheeky.

The only word she can come up with to describe how he looks now is _sinful_.

 _Sinful_ in the way the remaining droplets roll off him, down from his hair to his jaw, dribbling onto his shoulders before slipping off the pinking curves and returning into the water at an agonisingly slow pace. Even the droplets that have slipped down onto his lips are driving her mad.

She knows it’s ridiculous, but she can’t help but to think that the world is against her, that all of this is happening to torture her, plain and simple. Her eyes strain as she watches the droplets on his lips, and _somehow_ , she thinks, the water there is making them more inviting. _Somehow_.

Some of the droplets roll off the curves of his mouth and return to the water. But some stay, the bloody tenacious things. And those are the ones she wants to kiss and lick away the most.

She wonders what he’d do if she did.

Roxy gulps and realises that if she doesn’t create some distance between them both, that she’d combust. Or, if not combust, make even more a fool of herself. She pushes herself backwards in the water, splitting the tide behind her until her spine hits the seating perch. Treading water’s becoming increasingly more difficult the more she stares at him, the more she gives her eyes time to find something new to fixate on and think about.

Her mind feels clouded and light as she sets herself on the perch, as she tries to pull herself together. In attempt of this, she closes her eyes again, tighter this time, until all she can see is a blood red from the sunlight, and balls her fists beneath the surface of the water, letting them rest against the rough, cream granite, where she thinks—well, _hopes_ , really—he won’t be able to see the struggle.  

She tries to pull herself together. Really, _really_ tries.

But she slips. She slips and lets her mind wander free for just a moment, and suddenly, all she can think about, all she can see through the redness of her mind’s eye, is his mouth. All she can think about is the water droplets rolling all over and off the surface area of his lips, slowly dragging across the dips and curves. Her chest hurts and her heart feels like it’s tugging at the thought; her throat tightens, too, and it feels like she’s fighting a war with something in her to stop herself.

It’s having to hold it all back that’s getting to her, that’s making it _hurt_ so bad. That she can’t touch him, and _he_ can’t touch _her_. She can’t even conceive of going there— _ever_. She knows never to get involved.  

But part of her just wants to, anyway, just to make it stop hurting so much.

All she wants to do in that moment—the only thing that seems to make any bloody _sense_ —is to swim over to him and press her lips against his, to tangle her fingers in his short, wet hair and get it over with. To see if doing anything about it would actually do her any good.

If she were being honest, then she’d admit she’s wanted to kiss him since the very first day they met. It was immediate; from the very first moment he stepped through the door of the barracks, all purse-lipped and wound up the way he was for reasons she never managed to learn, she could feel it. And she knew—or, again, _hoped_ —that from the way he looked at her as they shook hands the first time, from the silent once-over with his eyes, and from the slightly puzzled, but playful, half-smile he gave her, that he did, too. Just as much as she did.

_Can he feel it, too?_

It’s been a few months now since then, and they’ve still gotten nowhere. She doubts they ever will by now.

But to be fair, if it went sour, it would just make things weird between them. And that’s the last thing she wanted. He’s been the only thing that’s made being around the others while training _bearable_.

If Kingsman were anything like her old Army days, there’d be no fraternisation, and for good reason, too. But it never stopped her from thinking about it, at least, either during the day when she caught a glimpse of him from far away, all candid and striking in his own way, or at night when all the others had gone to bed, and she lay in her tiny bed, the only one wide awake, still, with her doona lifted up to her chin as she stared up at the celling and let her imagination go wild about the man sleeping soundly just a bed away from her, totally unaware.

She could waste so much time thinking about it, find herself so deep in a fantasy that she could lose minutes of time entirely to it. She noticed, as they played in the pool, that his shoulders were beginning to pink and freckle from the sun exposure. It took everything in her to not swim over to him and kiss the skin there, to watch his face screw up and him smile because the whole gesture was _so_ _ridiculous, Rox..._

Her favourite time waster is thinking about his mouth. For some reason, she always ended up going back to that. She loved thinking about the plushness of it, and wanting to know if it felt as soft as it looked. And the sounds he’d make. She could spend a ridiculous amount of time thinking about the sounds he could make, wondering whether he’d gasp if she bit his lip just enough, the way she imagines he’d like, or if he’d groan deeply if she dipped her head down and began placing damp, open-mouthed kisses on his neck.

Would he let his head loll back if she kissed down and across his throat? Would his jaw slack the way it does if she kissed along the sharpness of the bone, his eyes fluttering shut like butterfly wings? Would his mouth fall open, without him even realising, if she found his spot? Is he the vocal type?

What would she have to do for him to be?

 _Anything_ , she thinks with a miserable sigh, answering her own question. _Absolutely anything._

The tips of her ears sear at the thought, and _God_ , if only she had the answers to all of those burning questions. She’d be the happiest woman on Earth, probably.

If you could say one thing about her, it’s that her will is strong, her resolve nearly unbreakable. But there’s something about him that so easily and completely unravels all that; that breaks it all down and pulls it apart until her famously ‘unbreakable’ will and resolve are nothing but a pile of dusty rubble on the floor at her feet. It takes everything in her to not act out on her thoughts, to let go and let herself swim over to him, to wrap her legs around his middle and her arms around his neck to kiss him, finally, until he’s left breathless, all heavy lidded and smiling again, because... _finally_.

Her skin burns as she thinks of his arms wrapping around her back, and it feels like they’re actually there, as though she can feel the warmth of his arms pressing against her skin, and the smoothed down hairs. And her head suddenly feels like it’s been filled with static when she thinks about being able to feel him, too.  

The image fills her mind: the both of them wrapped around each other in the middle of the pool, a tangle of limbs and body parts, bopping up and down in one place as the tiny waves push through them. It would be so easy for him to keep her up as they kissed like that, she thinks, whether in water or on land, tangled in his arms, and then she thinks about how his pretty mouth could so easily handle all the rest. But then she finds the image leaving her with an almost bittersweet feeling, right deep in the pit of her stomach, as though she’s only now beginning to feel the disconnect between her and _them_ , like she can _now_ feel the _heaviness_ of it. It feels as though she’s watching, from the sidelines, two people who aren’t even them, and it leaves her feeling like a lonely fly on the wall. A miserable voyeur.

 _This isn’t helping_ , she thinks, trying to shake the rotten image from her mind’s eye. But it’s seared into her brain, stuck in her optic nerves, leaving her with no other choice but to face it, over and over. Another heat slices through her, burning much hotter than the last, and it’s like a knife through butter.

Why was it so easy for him to get under her skin without really knowing it? Without even trying?

The feeling starts at her cheeks before blazing downwards like an unstoppable flame to her chest, where the pain is dry and rough, almost like sandpaper against her lungs, before it dips further until it reaches between her legs, where it aches and thrums. She feels like she’s going to implode any moment.

She doesn’t.

The thought of getting out of the pool entirely crosses her mind, as to remove herself from the sight.

But she doesn’t do that, either.

Instead, all she does is open her eyes, and _finally_. It’s felt like a lifetime since she last has. _How long has he been waiting for me?_ The light is bright at first, blinding her vision for a moment before clearing. When the light clears, she sees him already halfway over to her, pushing through the water with his chin scraping across the tiny waves.

And Roxy’s body freezes when she realises he’s coming over to her. Whether or not it’s her own free will keeping her there, sat on the granite perch, or because she truly can’t find the strength to move, she doesn’t know. He keeps on swimming, though, seemingly oblivious to her struggle, and approaches her steadily.

Eggsy stops a few feet from her, and his arms move through the water, his legs kick, to help keep him upright at the deepest end. Roxy watches him, quizzically, for a few moments as he does nothing but float silently.

His face is unreadable, which is odd, because typically, she was quite good at reading him—at reading anyone, really. But her mind is so clouded that she can’t pull anything together. It’s a little bit stoic, his expression, and a voice in her head wonders if he’s going to kiss her. Another part _wishes_ he would.

Eggsy then grins, his expression shifting quickly and easily from one to another, as he shoves his hand forward against the water, sending a large splash her way.

He doesn’t kiss her, after all.

Roxy shouts and turns her head away to dodge the attack before shoving some over to him, her hand violently smacking against the water in retaliation.

“Don’t be a dickhead, Eggsy!” Roxy shouts, and the way she says it is flustered and full of unfiltered frustration. But then it leaks away the moment she hears him screeching and laughing as he dodges her blows, his eyes all sparkling green and crinkled in all his delight. She finds herself smiling, too, laughing along with him because she can’t help it when she’s with him. She lunges forward, catching him by the shoulders as he turns his body away from her, trying to escape, but she’s secured herself around his neck.

She can’t stay mad at him.

 

 **II.** **LOW BLOW :**

Eggsy dodges the swing Roxy sends his way with a graceful ease, and it’s like he’s swatting away a fly. He catches her balled fist in his open palm before shoving it back her way. The force behind it almost sends her tumbling backwards onto the crashmat behind her, but she catches herself, finding her footing before she repositions herself in front of him, adjusting her stance, like Merlin showed her.

“Again!” Merlin calls out, bellowing out to all the pairs. “Switch, now!”

Now it’s Eggsy’s turn. He speeds towards her, all brute force, but before he could throw a swing himself, she catches his wrist and tugs it down forcefully. He grunts at the pressure, hissing through clenched teeth, but before he can think or even make another move, he finds himself suddenly knocked off his feet, thanks to the unanticipated leg swipe from her.

Eggsy flies back, his arms flailing as he scrambles to grab onto something that isn’t even there, and lands onto the crashmat with a loud _oof_! and _thud_ as the air gets knocked out of him. In the distance, Roxy can hear Charlie and Digby snickering to themselves at how easily he was disarmed... and by _her_ , of all people, but then she hears Merlin’s voice, and him shouting at them to pack it in and _focus_.

Roxy can feel Merlin’s curious eyes on her as she moves, quick and easy like a snake, but she pays him little mind before she lunges over to Eggsy sprawled out on the floor.

Even though she doesn’t land on him, exactly, he still grunts when he hears her knees drop onto the mat. Roxy hovers above him, squatting barely an inch or two from his abdomen, and settles her legs on either side of him, trapping him there between her legs. She holds out her stuck-out thumb to his throat, mimicking a weapon, her trimmed nail digging into his throat deep enough for him to get the point, but gentle enough as to not hurt him.

“ _Dead_.” Roxy smiles in satisfaction, quirking her head to the side in triumph.

Eggsy splutters out a laugh at that, thanks to the unexpected humour in her gesture, and it makes his whole body move along with him. She feels his Adam’s apple bobbing as he laughs, grazing against her thumb, and it’s enough to make her breath hitch in her throat momentarily.

 _Fuck_ , she thinks, dreadfully. She’d been doing so well at keeping it—at keeping _him_ —out of her head. He’s a mate, and that’s it. No more fantasising. But now it’s all coming back to her, like a wrecking ball slamming into her stomach and sending her flying in another direction.

“God help the bloke who ends up pissin’ you off, Rox,” he says, breathlessly, a smile still plastered on his face. She doesn’t know if he’s breathless from the fall, or because she’s straddling him.

She’d be lying if she said she didn’t hope for the latter.

“So, you mean...” Her voice trails off, and there’s an uncharacteristically cheeky edge to it, “... _you_?”

Eggsy snorts, his features softly squishing in delight. “ _Cheeky_...” he murmurs, a playful warning to the tone, before he arches his head back further on his own crashmat. He opens his mouth up to get some more air, still not having recovered fully from the blow of the fall, and his chest rises as he does. Roxy can feel his belly brush between her legs—though, briefly—and it makes her freeze completely, stiffen like a statue, and she wonders in horror if he can tell, too... wonders if it’s getting to him as much as it’s getting to _her._

But he shows no indication. His stomach brushes against her middle once more, and this time, a jolt goes through her, like a shock of electricity, and suddenly, she finds herself falling forwards, almost like having been pushed down by something. Roxy stops herself before she can land on top of him completely, though, pressing her hands firmly on the crashmat, on either side of his head. 

Whatever just happened, it felt like a low blow.

A dread washes over her when she realises that it’s beginning again. Her stomach drops, her heart tugs and her chest begins aching again, like all those other times, and the pain of it comes rushing back to her. It’s like the floodgates have opened again, and she’s caught in the rapid current, helpless to being washed away by the tide.

She knows she’s screwed. Completely, totally and utterly _screwed_ beyond repair.

Eggsy’s mouth still hasn’t closed, and it’s felt like ages since he lasted closed it. From this distance, she notices that, today, his lips are sort of chapped, but only slightly—a little on the edges and in the middle; tiny little flicks of picked-away flesh. But she wants to kiss him anyway, deeply and quickly, wants to knock the breath out of him as she drapes herself over his body, as she rests both her forearms on either side of his head, against the cool, blue crashmat. She wants to feel his hands on her back as they kiss, wants to feel them dipping beneath her black, cotton Kingsman training shirt and run all up and down her back—to feel his palms kneading the flesh or even to feel just his fingers, and them searing into her skin a trail of feather-light, hair-raising touches.

She wants to feel him smile against her mouth—most of all—and kiss her right back, however he wanted.

Her mind travels, and she begins to think about what else she could do, what she’d _want_ to do if only they were alone. She’d like to rock her hips against him – against his stomach at first, just to give him a taste of his own medicine, to make him feel how she feels, and then against his hips fully. She imagines then the sounds he’d make, all those quiet little hums and moans and gasps and groans against her lips as she wickedly keeps teasing him until he decides to switch up their positions and show her what _he_ wants to do to _her_.

And there’s something about his tongue, too, that she notices, seemingly for the first time. It’s on full display now, and from where she is, she can see it twitch and move as he takes in some more uneven breaths. And it makes it all worse, makes her feel dizzier and the pain worse as her mind begins to travel to _that_ part of him—making her think of what he could do with it, the places he could take it, what it could get out of her.

The feeling, as much as it hurts and burns dryly in her chest, is intense and intoxicating. It feels like a total rush, if she was being honest, like every nerve ending in her body is standing to attention because of him. She tingles everywhere, from the top of her head to the tips of her toes, and it feels better than anything she’s ever experienced before.

 _Wild_.

If she had to describe the feeling it left her with, it would be that. He makes her feel _wild_.

Maybe that’s one of the reasons she likes him so much, because he makes her feel _wild_ —wild and carefree. Growing up, she rarely got the chance to be wild, too hung up on being proper and sensible and like how her parents her wanted her to be. But now she’s older, and when she’s with him, it’s different. It feels like nothing else in the world matters. Not a bloody thing. It’s like all she has to do is look at him and suddenly everything else in the world, everything she was ever taught growing up, just leaks away entirely.

And then all that’s left is _him_ and _her_ , without restrictions, free to do and feel whatever they wanted. A liberating sort of feeling she didn’t know she’d been missing in her life until she shook his hand.

 _Except_ , she was reminded, they _couldn’t_. Not really. _Not with this, at least._

Something still holds her back from taking the plunge.  

 _The sensible part of me,_ she supposes—the thing that tells her to be _reserved_ and _proper_ , to not act out in such a rash away, not the way she truly wants to. It feels like there’s only just a thin string holding her back, wound around her tightly, and it’s been straining under the weight of all her desire to let go for months. All she’d need to do is cut it loose. That one, final string, and that would be it.

But she wonders... could it really be that simple in reality?

Roxy gulps, and _hard_ , and it’s like she’s trying to swallow down a rock. Her mind doesn’t wander away from the thoughts of his tongue. It goes ahead and it designs new ideas and fantasies just as easily as all the other times, mapping out the things she could do with it, or what _he_ could do with it. She imagines how it would feel, all warm and wet against her own tongue or even on her lips. She wonders if he’s the dominating type, if he’d take charge of it. She wonders if she’d actually ever _let him._  

Roxy thinks of his tongue on her mouth, about it sinuously dragging across as it traces the outline and follows the curves deeper in. And then of it moving away from there to different places. Her mind goes down further into the gutter as she begins to think about him using his tongue in other ways—like to soothe the spots where he’s bitten down into her skin, a balm for the sting and marks he’s left behind; about his tongue dragging, all hot and wet, down her neck and the column of her throat until it reaches the valley of her breasts, licking down and capturing a nipple, making her all sensitive and on edge until all she can manage is letting a string of jumbled sounds—not even proper words, anymore—bubble from out her lips in total bliss.

And _then_ of it continuing downwards, about Eggsy pressing kisses down her stomach, sucking at some parts, and licking at others, nipping here and there, and leaving a trail of wet marks along the toned skin of her belly, marking his presence there. _I’ve been here._ And then she thinks of his rough, warm hands trailing along her sides and her thighs; thinks about Eggsy dragging down her tights and underwear at the same time as he makes his way down, as he presses his face deeply into the dips of her abdomen and lets his mouth do all the work.

She nearly moans aloud when she thinks about his mouth on her thighs, nipping and kissing and sucking and licking all up and down, teasing and keeping her waiting longer for what she really wants. She bites the moan back in real life, but it threatens to spill out again when she thinks about his mouth finally attaching to her middle, about his mouth and tongue all warm and hot against her, lapping and sucking and so bloody eager to please; about his nose bumping against her and about him smiling smugly against her when he hears all the sounds she’s letting slip, all the ones she can’t hold back anymore.  

Roxy feels woozy. She feels flushed and hot from all that in the Kingsman gymnasium. Despite the cool air blasting into the room from the air conditioner, she feels like she’s in a sweltering heatwave, all clammy like she’s got a cold sweat. Worst of all is that she swears she can feel his tongue on her, at all the places she imagined him to be at, doing all the things she wants him to, but he’s not got his tongue on her at all.

Eggsy’s still sprawled out on the floor beneath her, trapped between her small, muscle-toned legs.

A searing heat between her legs finally kicks her back into reality. It’s hotter than anything she’s had before, and for some reason, she can tell it’s not from all the daydreaming. _No, it’s different._ Instinctively, she looks down, and finds herself sitting on his stomach now, no space left between them. And just like that, her mind kicks right back into gear, going—what feels like—a trillion miles a second. She’s become painfully aware of his body heat—how it slips through his black, cotton gym shirt and how it seeps into the fabric of her tights.

The worst thing is that she can feel him—can feel the toned muscles of his abdomen against her thighs and her middle, hard and shifting beneath his taut, but soft nonetheless, skin. And Roxy almost chokes.

She’s so close to cracking completely, so close to having that tie holding her back cut. If they weren’t with everyone else, she thinks she would’ve grabbed his face and brought him in for a deep, nearly wild, kiss that would leave him dazed and breathless beneath her.

 _Liar_ , a voice says. _You wouldn’t have the guts, even if you were alone with him._

Eggsy, the poor thing, is staring at her now, with these soft and wondering green doe eyes. What gets her is that she doesn’t know how he’s feeling. She doesn’t know if he feels the same, if he can feel it, too; if he wants to kiss her as badly as she wants to kiss him, or if he’s just confused as to why she hasn’t moved in such a long time, or why she’s begun to sit on him without warning. Or _explanation_ , for that matter.

“Positions!” Merlin’s voice is loud and it cracks through the thick silence like a whip. She’s thankful.

The command is enough to snap her out of it. Was Merlin watching her the entire time? _Was everyone else watching me?_ Roxy lifts herself off Eggsy completely and lowers her eyes, unable to even _look_ at him after all that, and offers him a hand when she gets on her feet. He accepts it; though, she knows he doesn’t need it, and he lifts up with an uncomfortable groan.

The underside of her palm burns where he holds her hand, all rough and warm. And she doesn’t really want to let go. She wants to keep holding on. She wants to have his hands all over her, wherever he wanted, whenever he wanted. But she lets go him. _You’re pathetic_ , she thinks to herself as she chews the insides of her cheeks.

Roxy spins around quickly the moment she sees he’s on his feet, wanting to avoid eye-contact for the moment. _Focus,_ she tells herself as she walks over to her mark on the floor. She closes her eyes briefly before taking a deep breath, desperate to quickly put everything back together, all of that will and resolve hers.

She wishes she knew how to make it stop, how to get him out of her head. She’d give anything to know how.

Roxy turns to face him, finally, opening her eyes and lifting her chin up. She can’t read the look on his face, which threatens to break her focus, but she doesn’t let it. She is stone faced as she positions herself into her fight stance, ready to go.

“Go!”

 

**III. UNDER YOUR SKIN:**

“I’ve got a question for ya, Rox,” Eggsy announces, out of the blue.

“Hmm?” She hums as she turns to face him. He’s grinning, drunk already, and full of mischief.

“What’s your favourite part of a person, would you say? Physical part of ‘em, ‘course.”

Roxy makes a puzzled face, her features scrunching up. “What kind of question is that?”

“A _question_.” Eggsy says, firmly, his smile never faltering. “Come on, y’know what I mean, don’t ya? What part of a person really gets you goin’?”

“What turns me on, you mean?”

Eggsy snorts into the rim of his bottle and smiles, replying, with a shrug, “That’s one way of puttin’ it.”

Finally permitted to leave the grounds again and take a night-trip to the city, the both of them find themselves in a small, mostly full, pub somewhere in South-East London that Roxy’s never been to before. The air in the pub is thick and smoky, and reeks of bad beer and nicotine. Her nose scrunches up at the smells, still not having gotten used to it yet like he has. She’s been to better places, definitely. Classier places, even. But it was all Eggsy’s idea going there, and he’d been so excited to make a trip down to the area that she couldn’t say no.

He’d been banging on the whole way there that she needed to _‘...let off some of that steam...’_ – whatever that meant. Said that this pub would do just that. She still hasn’t discovered _how_ exactly, but...

 _A club would’ve been more effective_ , she thinks, tapping the glass of her Apple Cider, bored.

They’d been drinking steadily for nearly two hours now, and for the most part, are drunk. Not completely smashed, though, not just yet—just enough to make it seem like they’re having fun in this _cesspit_ of a pub.

(But don’t tell Eggsy she thinks that. This actually might be one of his favourite pubs. Why? She has no clue.)

Perhaps that’s why she decided to indulge him in this personal topic. In any other circumstance, she’d shake her head and tell him to stop asking such ridiculous questions, hiding the very slight blush from her cheeks and moving on. But this was her fourth Cider, and she was _definitely_ beginning to feel it, making her feel all light and prepared to talk about whatever he wanted.

“I don’t think I wanna say,” Roxy murmurs with a smile creeping on her lips. “You’ll laugh at me, for sure.”

He scoffs in disbelief. “I’d never laugh at ya, Rox!” His voice is light and cheeky as he holds up three fingers, pointing them up to the celling with a fake-seriousness. “Come on, love, Scout’s honour.”

Roxy snorts with her lips around the rim of her bottle. She lowers it and wipes her mouth, raising her eyebrows again with a delighted, drunk grin. “Were you _really_ a Scout?”

Eggsy twists his mouth to the side, his eyes crinkling. “Depends. I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.”

Roxy snorts again, and covers her nose. “ _Gross_...” she snickers. “Promise you won’t laugh if I tell you?”

“I’d never laugh at ya, Rox. You know that. You’re my mate, aren’t ya?”

“That philosophy’s certainly never stopped you before.”

“Oh, just bloody _tell_ _me_ , already,” Eggsy blurts, pretending to be fed up. His smile never falters.

Roxy squirms, tucking her shoulders into her body in embarrassment as she just lets it out. “Mouths. I’ve got a big thing for _mouths_ , okay?” She looks down at the bottle she’s cradling between her hands, nursing it.

From the corner of her eye, she sees his smile falter briefly before appearing again. The skin beside his mouth wrinkles on the one side, the way she loves. And at that, she lets out a sigh.

Luckily she can mask that as embarrassment, too.

Roxy turns her head to glance at him. There’s a glint in his eyes, she can see. In the dim light of the pub, his usually bright green-blue eyes are a darker emerald, and – _God_ , the way he’s looking at her is making her breath feel all uneasy, the way his muscles are all slack and his eyes hooded slightly...

“That right, is it?” He asks, making it sound like he already knew the answer to begin with. The lifted corner of his mouth lifts higher, slightly smug.

“You promised you wouldn’t laugh.” Roxy murmurs, turning her face away. She pouts a little.  

“I’m not laughing,” he replies, softly and so matter-of-fact. She can feel his eyes on her, trying to read her.

Something anxious tugs in her. _Does he know?_ He makes it sound like he does.

“You’re... judging me, though. That’s, like, _worse_.”

Eggsy pokes a knuckle lightly against her bicep, urging her to continue. He smiles at her, nicely, when she finds the strength to glance at him again. “Why’ve you picked the mouth, then? What do y’ like about ‘em?” Roxy pauses, staring at him, causing him to add, “No judgement, Rox, I promise. Judgement free zone.”

Roxy gives him the tiniest of shrugs, pathetically small. Her voice is just as small. “I don’t really know.”

Eggsy tuts at that, unsatisfied. “There’s gotta be _something_ , Rox, otherwise you wouldn’t be into it.” His soft smile curves into something more light-hearted and cheeky, and his voice drops an octave when he asks her quietly, as though it’s a secret, a joke. “What about them makes you all _hot_?”

The way his voice drops makes her grip on the bottle tighten. Has he done that on purpose? That’s definitely something he’d do. She knows him. Knows how he works. _He definitely knows_ , she thinks, and the thought of him knowing makes her feel all shaky, like she’s fifteen and clueless again.

Roxy always knew what to do next, but now...

Her hands slip down from the bottle suddenly as she tightens her grip, the condensation having made the glass all slippery. She curses and fixes her hands, trying to recover smoothly.

“I’ve not got a clue why I like them, Eggsy, I told you that,” she says, flushed and frustrated at herself. Eggsy doesn’t take his eyes off her, his expression never changes, and it makes her sigh in resignation. “They just feel good, don’t you think?” She adds, glancing at him for a response.

His voice is just as deep and low as he murmurs, “Sometimes, yeah. Sometimes not, though.”

Eggsy’s body is close to her now, very nearly crammed right next to hers in the pub booth of theirs. Despite there being plenty of space for them both, they find themselves crammed side to side, nearly thigh to thigh, hip to hip. _Has Eggsy moved closer_ , she wonders, _or am I imagining it?_

His head is still dipped, eyes still all soft and heavy as he tries to catch her gaze properly, and for more than a few seconds. She can feel his body heat radiating off him, feel it in the space between them and especially at the parts where their clothes are touching, where his heat seeps through the fabric of his clothes and into hers. It’s like she’s sitting right next to a living room heater— _that’s_ how much she can feel it.

Is it him, or the pub?

Roxy clocks another look at him, briefly, but then looks away and purses her lips when she catches him already looking at her, his eyes all dark with the lack of light and lips parted slightly. She gulps, suddenly feeling the need to excuse herself and rush outside for some air.

If she were a smoker, she’d have a smoke. _That clears your head, doesn’t it? Calms your nerves?_

Her words are an uncomfortable mumble, not like her at all, and it’s nearly lost amongst the rowdy chatter from the other patrons. “I think mouths can do nearly anything if someone’s good enough...” she admits.

“Have you ever found anyone good enough?” He asks. It’s low and she _swears_ she can feel it rumbling from his chest, from the cushions of their booth seats. The comment alone is enough to surprise her, to make the hairs on the back of her neck stand up on end. _He’s taking the piss,_ she tells herself, swallowing dryly. _Has to be, right?_

But then she looks at him, and his eyes are still on her, and there’s nothing she can pinpoint from her training that would tell her he is making fun of her, not even in his own little, Eggsy way. Nothing at all.

She wonders if he’s using some NLP trick on her, one she’s missed somehow. _We do have an NLP exam soon_ , she thinks. _Maybe he’s practicing on me_. But she can’t recognise the technique for the life of her.

She bites her lip, uncertain about it all. Maybe it’s the drink clouding her mind, unable to make her think straight. _Yes_. It’s _definitely_ the drink. _That has to be it, right?_

Eggsy, all of a sudden, shifts and scoots even closer to her. His arm drags across the smooth, wooden table as he moves, and his forearm brushes against hers, a tiny little touch and graze that alone makes her feel like she’s got a tub of butterflies swarming all over in her stomach.  

The thick smoke in there makes it even worse, makes her feel twice as hot and bothered as before, and the smoke feels heavy enough that it’s actually weighing her down.

But she doesn’t leave. She doesn’t think she wants to.

She doesn’t want that fresh air anymore. 

Despite the nerves, she wouldn’t want to move from her spot even if her life depended on it.

“Yes,” she answers him, her voice wavering as she tries to maintain eye contact. But then it falters, and she can’t help but look away from him and down at her bottle. “I have. Have—have you?”

He licks his lips and nods. “Yeah,” his voice is firm, and Roxy can’t quite tell if she’s feeling his hot breath on her or it’s just the haze. His forearm brushes against hers again, skin searing against skin, making the hairs on her arm stand up at the contact. It feels electric, them like this, for some reason. And it’s so _good._

The feeling goes straight to her head, makes her feel even dizzier, before it swims downwards between her legs, where she feels a dull, throb that makes her breath hitch. Just looking at him like this makes her _throb._

“I’ve _definitely_ had that before,” he continues, lowering his chin. His eyes crinkle as he watches her, his mouth smiling slightly, and despite the darkness of the pub, she can see a glint to his eyes.

He’s waiting for her reaction, to see what she does next with what he gives her, and that’s when she realises that he must know, and that if he does, he’s definitely trying to get under her skin on _purpose_.

She clocks another glance in his direction, hesitantly, but then she finds her eyes stuck on him, and his on hers. It feels like a lifetime goes by of them doing nothing but look at each other, and to her, then, everything else in the world seems like background noise, slipping away into static in the background, ignored by them both.

Her mouth parts, and all she can think about is kissing him, right then and there. And she almost does. But something in her stops her from doing so. She could kiss him, could blame it on the booze and laugh it off with him because he’d be a good sport about it, she knew that. But she doesn’t take the risk.

By the way he looks at her, she thinks he feels the same way—otherwise, why would he be acting like has? But he doesn’t kiss her, either. So, maybe he _is_ taking the piss. Maybe it’s all just a joke.

It’s all been too good to be true.

Roxy wets her lips thinking about it, though, about kissing him, right then and there, and how it would be like with them cramped like this, touching arms and knees; so close she can feel the heat from him and can feel his breath hitting her face. She thinks about him dipping his head down further and capturing her lips with his, about him cradling her face with one of his hands and exploring with his mouth. With the smoke swimming all around them the way it is, she begins to imagine how foggy and hot the kiss would feel compared to if they kissed out in the fresh air outside, their minds all hazy and their lips just as lazy against one another.

All there would be in that moment would be them, just like that. No one else.

Their eyes are still on each other, and still she wonders if he’s ever gonna do anything, if _she_ is gonna ever do anything. Pull away or move in, it didn’t matter all that much to her anymore; she just wanted something to happen, something that would cut through the tension and put an end to it.

The cheeky half-smile of his drops completely, sinking down until the muscles around his mouth go slack. His lips part gently, barely an inch apart, but _just enough_ , she thinks. Just enough that, if she really wanted to, she could slot her mouth with his easily, and that would be it. The parted space is almost perfect, and she doesn’t know if it’s a sign or not, a subliminal way of him telling her that— _yes, it’s okay. Lean in. Kiss me._

The tension between them reaches a high point, a nearly insufferable intensity, but then she lets out a laugh. It bubbles from her throat and out of her mouth without her even realising it. She leans down as she laughs, her forehead grazing the table, and when she looks back up at him, she finds him smiling again, but puzzled.

“What’s so funny?” He asks, sounding a bit defensive, like he thinks she’s laughing at _him_.

“Good _God_!” She whispers, letting out another small, drunken giggle. Finding her breath again, she reaches out for the bottle cap she finds in front of her and fiddles with it, shyly. “I can’t believe I told you that!”

He sounds earnest when he replies with, “It’s okay, Rox,” almost like he means it. Truly. Then, he shrugs, casually, like it doesn’t even matter. “Everybody’s got their kinks.”

Roxy gasps at that and finds him smiling, mischievously. “Don’t call it a kink, okay! You make it sound like I’ve... got a fetish for mouths, or something. It’s so gross.”

Eggsy takes his arms off the table and crosses them over his chest, leaning back in his booth seat. His chin wrinkles. “Well, you sort of... do? I mean...”

“Oh, _God_ ,” she groans, lolling her head back and staring up at celling in dread. “You’re not gonna let this down, are you?”

“Nup!” He grins, curling his lips inwards. “I’ve got a good memory, haven’t I?”

When she lowers her head back down to see him, she finds him watching her with amusement, his lower lip caught by his upper teeth. His teeth sink down deeper slowly, and all she can fixate on is the slow depression of his pink lips, the deliberate movement of his. It’s driving her up the wall, and she can’t look away.

 _He knows_ , a voice keeps telling her. She swallows the lump in her throat, nervously.

Eggsy biting his lip like that is an image she knows for sure her mind won’t forget for a very long time. She didn’t expect it to have such an effect on her, but it does, more so than she could handle in that moment. The dull throb between her legs returns, and at full force, it seems. It leaves her with no other choice but to find a way to ease the tension. If she didn’t, she’d surely implode, cave in on herself.

It’s ridiculous how much he was getting to her, at how easy it is for him to.

She goes to cross her legs, but in their close proximity, her knee accidentally knocks against his. Worst of all, it’s noticeable. No chance in hell he’d miss that, and she knew he hadn’t, because when she knocked into him, she saw his eyebrows lifting, just barely an inch upwards, his expression slightly surprised but smug nonetheless. And definitely, that is the kind of detail that’s easily missed by anyone else. An eyebrow raise could mean anything depending on the circumstance, depending on the type of person.

But she knows him best. And Roxy Morton doesn’t miss a _bloody_ _thing_. 

On edge, Roxy reaches for her Cider and takes a desperate sip of it like it would give her all the answers, or like it would ease the knot in her stomach. It didn’t. It just fizzed in her mouth, bitter slightly in taste, and slid down her throat quickly, leaving her only with a dry feeling. She feels just as bloody clueless as before.

“Maybe I can get enough drinks in you tonight that you’ll forget everything I said.” Roxy murmurs, quietly, as she lowers her bottle down on the table and traces the rim with a delicate finger.  

He wasn’t supposed to hear that, but he did. The wrinkles on the side of his mouth return as his smile grows. He gives her a cheeky nudge and wink as he says, “And maybe you’ll get enough drinks in _me_ tonight that I’ll end up using _my_ mouth on _you_.”

Roxy chokes on that. Her eyes nearly bulge out of their sockets as she coughs, and her face reddens in embarrassment. She splutters, unable to find the words. How do you even respond to that? And all Eggsy does is smile more, the bloody bastard, knowing exactly what he’s doing and pleased with himself. She feels flustered and hot, like she’s about to burst. “What? Wha—what are—?”

Eggsy reaches out for his drink and wraps his lips around the rim, smiling before he arches his head back and takes a long gulp. “I knew that’ll get y’ all hot an’ bothered,” he says, his rough, mumble-y South London accent really coming out the more he drinks. And that just makes her feel worse. She was a bloody sucker for his different accent. His arm returns to the table, not-so-subtlety brushing against hers, and she freezes again.

Roxy wonders if she’s dreaming. If eventually, things will reach a climax and she’ll wake up in the barracks of HQ, in her own bed, with Eggsy in the bed next to hers and the others all around them; if she’d open her eyes and find Merlin at the door, barking them all awake to get ready for a day of training.

She wonders if she’d actually prefer it to be a dream, that if this was, indeed, a dream, whether she’d want to open her eyes or keep them closed to stay there, with him like this.

Maybe that’s another thing she likes about him, how sometimes she didn’t know what to do when she was around him, when he got like this. She always had the answers to things, it seemed—knew the facts and the figures and the ways to get around a problem best.

But often with him, she didn’t have all the answers. It put her on edge; she wasn’t used to that, but there was something exhilarating about it. Maybe not knowing all the answers, or what to do exactly to get the best outcome possible, when she was with him, made him all the more exciting to her, all the more attractive.

Roxy stares at him, puzzled, her mouth opened partly in wonder. She’s still not got a clue what to say, but when he sees the look on her face, sees how lost she is; he drops the smile and shakes his head with a sigh. “I ain’t _blind_ , Rox,” he says. “I’ve seen the way you look at me sometimes.” He pauses and takes another sip of his drink before chuckling. “Heh. Like I’m a piece of _meat,_ sometimes, I swear!”

Her eyes widen again at that, utterly mortified. _He knows_. He knows about the looks and what they _mean_ and probably what she _wants_ from him, and it’s then when she wishes she could disappear completely, that her phone would ring and she could take the chance to dip away and get the hell out of dodge. But it doesn’t. Nothing happens. All she does is sit there, and all he does is wait quietly for a response from her.

But she doesn’t respond. Truth be told, she didn’t know quite what to say. She decided to reserve it unless he said something about how he feels, just to be on the safe side. His expression softens, and it genuinely looks like he feels bad. He shakes his head and wraps an arm around her shoulder, bringing her into his chest. And usually, it’s a friendly gesture, one they’ve shared many times, from both sides. But that was probably the very last thing she needed in that moment, being held by him and squashed into his warm, comforting chest.

She figures he feels it, too, feels the extra awkward tension she does because then she feels him tense behind her. He must be on auto-pilot, the poor thing.

“In all seriousness, Rox,” he steadies his voice and drags his arm away from her shoulder, allowing her to shift back to her old position. “It’s alright. Like I said, we’ve all got our kinks. Who cares if you’ve got one for my mouth? It’s no big deal.”

“I’ve— _not_!” Roxy screeches, sharply, before dropping it with a sigh. She reaches for the bottle cap again, and finds some comfort in rubbing the dipped edges under her fingers. “I’m...I...” She mutters, this time, shyly, but then the sharpness from before comes creeping back into her tone. “I do _not_ have a thing for your mouth, Eggsy. Bloody hell! Don’t be so _up_ yourself.”

Eggsy leans back in his seat, stretching his limbs. “No need to be ashamed, love,” he says with a tilt of his head. He lets his arms drape across the top of the seats, lazily, but deliberately avoids brushing against her shoulders. But he does knock a foot against hers, gently, to get her to look at him again. “I get it. We’ve been holed up at HQ for far too long, you know what I’m sayin’? You’ve not gotten any in, what, a year? Fair enough you’d start, y’know, lustin’ over me and that.” He pauses, soaking in the horrified look on her face before finishing, “If it makes y’ feel any better, Rox, I’m flattered. Pretty girl like you fancying me, that’s _sick_.”

Roxy scoffs. Even though he’s trying to help, it isn’t working. She lolls her head, scrunching up her features with a sense of disgusted shame. “Stop being a dick; I don’t fancy you. What makes you think _you’d_ be the one I’d go after, anyway? Who says you’re even my _type_?”

He leans forward quickly at that, laying his arms back on the table. He tries to fake the shock, but he can be a terrible actor sometimes, especially when he’s been drinking. It’s not long until he cracks a smile, betraying the whole thing. “What? You tellin’ me you fancied the _others_ then? What, is your type posh _tossers_?”

Roxy slumps her shoulders and lets her body go slack. She reaches for her bottle and takes a long, distant sip. “Fuck off, Eggsy,” she says, quietly, but there’s still an edge to it.

“Hey,” Eggsy says, putting his hand on her arm. The contact feels like a jolt of electricity has gone through her, but she manages to keep the reaction to herself. She just sits there and looks at him with displeased, heavy eyes. “Seriously, Rox...it’s nothing to be embarrassed about. Not like I’m gonna say anything to anyone ‘bout it.”

“I’m not embarrassed because there’s _nothing_ to be embarrassed about. I _don’t_ fancy you, don’t you _get_ that, Eggsy?” Roxy looks down at the hand on her arm and tugs away, harsher than she would’ve liked. But he was getting on her nerves. She just wanted to go back to HQ. Or drink more. But alone. “What’s _your_ thing, then?” She adds, sharply. “Hmm? What gets you all _hot_ and bothered?”

Eggsy doesn’t quite answer right away. He waits a moment, and then softens his features, smiling gently, all knowingly. He reaches out for his drink and wraps his lips around the edges, murmuring, “That’s for me to know, and for you to find out, innit?” before taking a long gulp.

Roxy just groans and stares up at the celling in frustration. He’s _impossible._

 

IV. **IN THE TINY DETAILS :**

If she were in charge, she wouldn’t have let him come aboard the plane and on the mission.

Not because she thinks he can’t do it properly, because he could. Despite the dog exercise, she knew for a fact he’s as good an agent as any, with more potential than they know what to do with. But he shouldn’t be with them. Not right now, at least. It’s not even because he’s not even a _proper_ agent.

It’s none of that, no. She’s just concerned for him, is all.

She knows where Merlin’s coming from. They need as much help as they can get. For all they know, the only uncorrupted agents left in the organisation were her—now _Lancelot_ —and Merlin. And Eggsy was good muscle, a good soldier and spy. But can’t Merlin see how Eggsy’s struggling?

He probably can. Merlin’s observant like that. But the world needs saving, after all.

Some things just need to take priority over others, and she understands that. But it still leaves a bad taste in her mouth thinking about how she can’t do anything to help him, at least not right now.

Roxy watches Eggsy carefully from one of the brown, leather one-seater sofas near the back of the plane. He takes a seat on the long, green couch opposite hers, and she can tell, just by looking at him, how much he’s struggling to keep it all together. She can see because he thinks no one is watching.

That’s another thing he’s good at, keeping it all in, at hiding how he truly feels. But she can see the cracks. His tactic—because she knows that’s exactly _what it is_ —has it’s cracks in it, and to the unsuspecting person, when he’s using it, he can make himself seem fine, make himself seem _just okay_ enough that they don’t bother him about it and risk upsetting him further. But she isn’t anyone.

She’s his best friend. And she knows him. She knows when he’s barely hanging on.

Despite all the effort to cover it all up, all of his pain and his sadness, the smallest of details betray him.

It’s in the way the skin around his throat tightens beneath the taut muscles, as though he’s trying to swallow something down, or trying to make sure that nothing bubbles to the surface, that gives him away to her. It’s also in the way his jaw is locked, more so than usual, and the way it looks like he’s biting the insides of his cheeks that shows her how much he’s struggling. It’s as though he’s doing all that to stop himself from wobbling, from splitting apart completely yet again when the pain comes rushing back.

It comes in waves. She knows how this works, how grief works. And he does, too.

After what he’s been through today...it’s a miracle he has the strength to keep moving as much as he is.

His whole body is stiff, and has been ever since he came to them earlier with the news, with Arthur’s phone. Roxy turns her head when she thinks he’s caught her looking, and every now and again, she glances to the side, watching him from the corner of her eye as he tries to get comfortable, but he just can’t. His body is too long for the couch, it seems, and he can’t figure out what to do with his legs, or his arms, or where to put his head.

She can see the frustration on his face, can see his teeth clenched together and the ever growing wetness in his eyes. He lets the frustration show because he thinks, again, that no one is looking at him. But she _is_.

And it’s breaking her heart.

She doesn’t even want to think about how he took Harry’s death earlier. He’d been all on his own. God knows what he did. She knows he saw it all from an earlier off-comment. It was so matter-of-fact and stiff and so unlike him that it freaked her out. She didn’t like seeing him like that.

Today must’ve been a nightmare for him, losing Harry like that. Roxy couldn’t even imagine what that would be like. She’d be completely gutted if she ever lost Percival.

She still hasn’t heard from him since they heard about the corruption. She hoped he hadn’t been swept away, too.

Roxy remembers clearly Merlin cocking a glance over to her after Eggsy mentioned watching Harry’s confrontation with Valentine, and it was one of silent concern. But then they all quickly moved on.

Eggsy _shouldn’t_ be coming along. Was he truly in the right headspace to be doing all he’s been asked to do?

It was all too raw, still—was she the _only_ person who could see that, who could pick up on that? And he looks so tired, she can see it on his face in the way the old lines have deepened and made him look older than he is. She doesn’t know what to do, what’s in her place, what’s pushing too far.

Eggsy mutters a curse under his breath loud enough for her to hear. She watches him secretly as he shifts and lowers himself down on the long couch. And taking the chance, she keeps her eyes on him for longer, watches as his whole face softens and his body relaxes as he finally finds a comfortable place to lie.

All she wants to do is go over to him. His eyes dart all over the plane like a curious child taking in all his surroundings, before they move and land on Roxy, where he catches her staring at him from her tiny sofa. He doesn’t look away from her, doesn’t show any sign of being mad at her for watching him.

‘ _Are you okay_?’ she mouths, silently, so Merlin wouldn’t hear.

His lips pout as he nods his head, firmly, blinking. ‘ _Yeah,_ ’ he mouths back, visibly gulping. ‘ _I’m fine._ ’

Roxy purses her lips, feeling as though that was the end of it. The firm last comment to shut her up. But he’s still looking at her with these damp, soft, green doe eyes, and she doesn’t have the heart to look away, not even for a second. The wetness is recent, she notices, he must’ve left some out quietly in the bathroom earlier. She makes sure to not bring it up, knowing it would just upset him further.

It’s a detail anyone else would’ve missed. But she doesn’t miss a thing.

With him still looking at her, Roxy gives him a soft smile, a tiny one that reaches her crinkling eyes and her pinking cheeks. And for a moment, she thinks it’s not going to work, because as if a smile is going to make the grieving process any easier, but then she sees the tiniest of smiles breaking out on his face, slowly.

It’s an easily missed movement. But look hard enough, and know what you’re looking for, and you can spot it. It’s all in the tiny details, and she knows him well enough to pick them out whenever he reveals them to her.

‘ _Do you want a hug_?’ She mouths, lifting her eyebrows with a small shrug.

His face screws up as he tilts his head. ‘ _What_?’

Roxy shakes her head at that, her smile growing at an unstoppable rate. ‘ _Do. You. Want. A. Hug_?’ She repeats, but slower this time, and making a hug gesture with her arms. His eyes narrow on her as he tries to read her lips, and she watches him with amusement as he does.

The moment Eggsy finally gets it, he lets out a laugh. It’s quick but loud and unexpected and it fills the hollowness of the plane easily and it’s enough to make the whole atmosphere feel sweeter, now; enough to make her feel all warm and soft inside and out, as cliché as that sounds.

Eggsy makes an _oops_! face, just for her, when he catches himself and quietens down. Roxy bites her cheeks to stop her laugh from bubbling out, and she quickly clocks a glance over to the cockpit to see if Merlin had heard, but he wasn’t looking at them at all, too busy trying to fly the plane to notice.

‘ _Yeah,_ ’ she sees him mouth in return when she looks back at him. He breaks out into one of those half-smiles she loves, all loose and easy, not cheeky but just soft and loving, the skin wrinkling at the sides. Her heart warms immediately at the sight, and deep in her belly, she can feel the familiar feeling of butterflies.

She doesn’t squash them down, though, all that feeling. She lets it in, wholeheartedly.

The thing that really gets her is that the feeling isn’t sexual at all this time. She doesn’t want to jump on him, doesn’t want to kiss him until he’s breathless, doesn’t want to devour him like she used to. She doesn’t care anymore about the sounds he’d made when she kissed him, or how he’d feel against her.

She doesn’t give a damn about that anymore.

It’s different. _Much_ different. Now, it’s like there’s an aching longing right in the middle of her chest. It doesn’t hurt so much anymore in the way it used to, where it was a _physical pain._ Right now, it feels warm and fuzzy and she feels like she’s the lead in a romantic novel. But it feels _good_. It doesn’t hurt anymore.

Roxy smiles as she gets up from her seat and moves over to his because it feels so _good_ to, so bloody _right._

Eggsy lifts his body up from his sofa and scoots so she has room to sit. She takes a seat next to him, and they both sit in silence for a while, his fingers scratching the nape of his neck and her hands on her lap. She begins to feel his eyes on her again, and can see, from the corner of her eye, his head dipped, as though searching for her gaze. She turns to him as to see him properly, and when she does, he tilts his head.

“Correct me if I’m wrong,” Eggsy begins, with a quiet sweetness to his voice that makes her cheeks warm up. “But I’m _pretty_ sure I was promised a hug from you, just then, wasn’t I?” Roxy lets her head loll to the side at that, trying to hide the smile threatening to spill on her face, and he has to bite his lower lip to stop his own from showing. “Come on, Rox,” he adds, hush, straining to keep quiet, “you ain’t gonna hold off on me, are ya?”

“Never...” she whispers, trying to be playful but it comes out more serious than she wanted it to be. Eggsy’s playfulness fades slightly, too, when she says that, but then she moves on. “Come here,” she says with a nod, sliding her arms over his shoulders and bringing him in for a hug. He does the same, shifting his arms and moving them until they’re wrapped and locked around her back tightly. He even squeezes her, which makes her laugh into his shoulder.

He shushes her when he hears her laughing at him for the squeeze before lowering his head to the crook of her neck, where he buries his face past the fabric of her clothes until he reaches her bare skin, where he nestles himself into the deepest crook of her neck, seemingly not caring how intimate the gesture was.

If Roxy Morton was anyone else, she would’ve missed so much, would’ve missed every single gesture and the things he was trying to convey through them. If she were anyone else, anyone but his best friend, she would’ve missed the hum he makes, or would’ve missed the way his nose rubs against the place between her neck and shoulder softly, almost like a sleepy cat or baby, or the shaky breath he lets out when she begins running her fingers up and down his back, over the cotton fabric of his hoodie.

But she wasn’t anyone else.

Her skin burns where he presses against her, but she doesn’t make him move—she doesn’t _want_ him to. She wants him to stay there, wrapped in her arms, and she in his, tangled like this in what’s probably the most comforting embrace she’s ever found herself in. She wonders if he can tell that her skin is clamming up, with him being this close to her, with them in such an intimately-feeling embrace. She wonders if he notices the tiny details in her, like she can with him—wonders if he can feel her heart beating as fast as it is with their chests pressed up together the way they are; if he can figure out _why_ she’s clamming up; if he can figure out what’s behind the soft fingers she’s running up and down his clothed spine.

He does nothing that shows he notices those details, and she wonders if she’s thankful for that or not.

All of a sudden, she feels Eggsy tighten his grip around her even more and murmur into her skin, right into the crook of her neck. But she couldn’t understand any of it.  

“What was that?” She asks, softly, lips forming the words dryly against the funny crease of his ear.

Roxy can feel him gulping, can hear the sound and feel his throat move against her collarbone. He shudders, murmuring, “Doesn’t matter right now,” before he rubs his nose against her cheek softly.

She realises that out of everyone she’s been with, either romantically or platonically, this— _this_ —has to be the most intimate thing she’s ever been involved with. There was something in this, something she couldn’t quite pinpoint, despite her being so good at it before. Roxy gulps and lowers her head onto his shoulder, tilting her head to the side. She inhales his scent, letting her fingers curl into his back gently as she does.

She smiles when she realises he’s gone back to his old scent—a wooden, citrusy, musky fragrance from Lynx. She’s not smelt that since their first day, over a year ago, now, but now that she has, a warmth oozes in her chest. She breathes it in again, trying to commit that _him_ scent back to into her memory, and moves her head to smile against his shoulder, an almost shy one. Her mouth moves softly against the fabric of that black and white Adidas hoodie of his, and she hopes he can feel it, hopes he catches the detail and can tell how she feels.

It’s hard for her to tell if the smile’s for him, to make him feel better, or if it’s just something unstoppable.

She begins to feel Eggsy’s hands move against her back, sliding against that grey blazer of hers, and the gesture alone is enough to fill her with an intoxicating feeling. It feels good being near him like this; it feels _right,_ like it’s the best thing in the whole entire world, but no matter how much she wants to stay wrapped in his arms like this, there’s something in her that makes her pull away slightly, something she can’t stop.

She doesn’t pull away completely, though. He feels her moving back, too, so he joins her, but they both only stop halfway. Their shirts brush against one another now, no longer right up against each other, but there’s still very little space between them; their arms are still wrapped around one another—though, granted, looser than they were before. Their faces are inches apart, too—so close, in fact, that she can feel his breath on her face again, all warm and slightly minty. Her stomach tightens at the feeling of him, at the _sight_ of him, his green eyes all soft and slightly dazed as to why she’s begun to pull away from him. Her stomach coils.

She finds her eyes, all of a sudden, dropping down to his mouth. Her own mouth parts when her eyes land on him, and it feels like she’s on auto-pilot again. God knows what might happen if she doesn’t get a grip of herself, and _quick._ Heaven forbid Merlin caught them like this. The feeling of leaning in and kissing him begins to flood her system again, makes her stomach flip and her head feel woozy. The overhead spotlight makes everything look soft and golden, easing all the sharp edges of his face and making him look youthful again.

Something tugs in her, and it’s just like that, at the drop of a hat, that the pain comes flooding back. It feels like a kick to her stomach, to her chest, and the only way to make it stop is to act on the impulse.

But she doesn’t kiss him. He watches her as she struggles, and she wonders if maybe he’s picking up on _that._ But she doesn’t think he is, that he can even notice those things like she can. He doesn’t make a sound, doesn’t pull away, or pull her back _in_ , for that matter. Roxy gulps again, swallowing hard, and manages to glance up at his eyes briefly before they dip back down to his mouth, where she notices a small, dark red patch of discolouration on his upper lip. The imperfection almost makes her smile, but she holds it back—no matter how much it hurts and aches for her to, she holds it back, tugs all the strings back in.

Her mind wanders. It would be so easy to kiss him, right then and there. The kiss would be soft and tender. There’d be no rush. It would just be him and her— _them_ —together, at last. Her mind continues to wander. It conjures the thought of the first kiss; how their mouths would slot together perfectly, like aligning puzzle pieces that have, at last, fallen into the right place. She thinks about wrapping her arms around his neck and about his arms tightening around her back to keep her secure in his arms—even though there would be nothing to protect her from—as their lips lazily locked against each other, their noses and chins bumping as they tried to find a rhythm, which would make them smile against each other’s mouths, wanting to laugh but not wanting to move away just yet, just wanting to enjoy the feeling a little while longer.

It aches and she longs but it can’t be now. Not here. Not when he’s like this.

She wants him to mean it—just as much as _she_ does.

Roxy steadies her breath and finds herself finally able to look back up at him. But then she finds his green eyes on her mouth, too, his lips more parted than they had been before, before he shifts his attention back up to her brown eyes. The look in his eyes is unreadable, to her surprise.

She wonders—and with a rather girlish, playground hopefulness to it—if he’s going to go for it this time, if he’s going to make the move and kiss her first. She wonders if he can feel it, too, if he wants it—if it hurts for him as much as it hurts for her. And if it does, how long has it been that way for him?

Most of all, she wonders, that if he did lean in to kiss her, would she let him? Even with how he is now?

“ _Lancelot_ ,” Merlin’s voice snaps them both out of their trance. Hearing his heavy, approaching footsteps against the plane’s floor makes them both detangle themselves from each other quickly. “Get into your Halo suit. It’s time to go.”

 

V. ** PATCH ME UP:**

“You keep wriggling around like this, Eggsy, and I’ll have to strap you down.”

The twisting of his features eases up immediately after he hears her say that. He smiles, and it’s a small kind of smile, a warm one. It’s softens the rest of his face, despite all the present cuts and bruises.  

“Is that right?” His voice is light and cheery. He turns his head towards her, where her eyes are down at his arm, a medical needle and thread between her fingers as she patches up the great big gash he got on his bicep. He nods his chin upwards when he says, “You’d like to that, wouldn’t you, Rox?”

“ _Oh_ , yeah!” She exclaims, letting herself sound more playful than she really feels.

She was used to seeing him all bruised up from missions; that came with the job, after all. Every single mission, he always came back needing something patched up, something checked out. But this was different. Merlin had to pull him out before it turned lethal and he was lucky to only escape with a few bruises and cuts, a rolled ankle, a few cracked ribs and a gash on his arm.

He returned to them like none of that had fazed him at all. Not like it did for her.  

“Like you wouldn’t _believe_ ,” Roxy adds.

“Yeah?” He asks, his eyebrows lifting. Glancing up at him, she finds him staring down at her with a toothy grin on his face, his pink tongue poking through his closed teeth.

Roxy bites back a smile at the sight of him and continues working on his arm. She pricks his skin with the needle and hears him hiss, can feel him tensing his muscles. Eggsy hated needles, more than anything. “Thinking about strapping you down is the only thing I think about most days – helps me get through those _long_ meetings.”

“You still think about my mouth, too, or have you gotten over that?”

Roxy’s head whips upwards in such an unsubtle way that, after the fact, she wants to kick herself for it. _Way to make it obvious_ , she thinks, scolding herself. But then she moves onto scolding _him_. “ _What_?!”

He lets out a tiny chuckle – the most painless one he could muster. “You know what I mean...”

It’s been nearly five years since that night in pub. Nearly five years and he’s still not let it go.

He did warn her that he never would.

“ _Aww_ ,” Eggsy smiles, the smugness in his voice only becoming more and more apparent the more he talks, the more she indulges him in this. “Gettin’ all embarrassed again, are you, Rox?”

“In your dreams,” Roxy murmurs, resuming her work on his stitches. She pulls at the thread, tugging it harshly through and to the other side. She doesn’t realise how hard she pulled until she hears him yelp.

“ _Ow_!” He winces, screwing up his features as he looks down at his reddening bicep, displeased at her handiwork. “The _fuck_ was that for?!”

Part of her wants to apologise, because she didn’t mean to do that. But another part of her was too annoyed with him to even give him that. Instead, she continues patching him up. Shrugging, she pricks into his skin with the needle again, and says, matter-of-factly. “You kinda deserved that.”

He scoffs in disbelief, but she can hear the smile coming back in his voice. “For _what_?”

“For being a _dickhead._ ” It feels like all her previous anger has leaked away now, but she doesn’t show him that. She bites down on her lower lip to stop herself from smiling, from giving him any of that satisfaction, and says, “Next time, I suggest not pissing off the person who has the _needle_ in your _arm_.”

He winces when she pulls the thread through to the other side, but keeps his smile, nevertheless. “And that’s your professional, medical opinion, is it, _Doc_?” He strains. “Shit... what’d they teach you lot in the Army?”

“Far more sense than they do with you Marine _brutes_ , that’s for sure.”

Eggsy guffaws, and his whole body moves along with him. The sudden movement almost causes the needle to prick him at the wrong place, but Roxy manages to stop that from happening. The laugh bounces off the walls of the Med-Bay room, but then quickly dissolves into a low whine from him when he realises how much pain that’s put him in. She sees him reaching out for his ribs with a free hand, cradling them with a groan.

“ _‘Marine brutes’_ , huh?” He grits out with clenched teeth, trying to push through all the pain. “That’s a new one.”

“Eggsy, come on,” she warns, ignoring his comment. “You keep moving and you’ll hurt yourself even more.”

“What,” he rasps, still trying to joke. “You’re not goin’ all soft on me, are you?”  

Roxy shakes her head as she threads through another suture, irritated by how he’s being. She hates how easy it is for him to get under her skin like this, how he’s making her feel like she’s boiling because he doesn’t understand the weight of this. “You’re just _always_ getting hurt,” Roxy says, firmly. “It’s ridiculous.”

“It’s part of the job,” Eggsy says, casually, and with the tiniest of shrugs. “Ain’t like I’m dead yet.”

“Yeah, but you _could’ve_ been.” Roxy replies, sharply, shifting her eyes back up at him. “Don’t you _care_ about how you nearly died earlier? They had to _pull you out_ so you wouldn’t.”

“ _Yeah_ , but I’m _fine_ , aren’t I?”

She can tell that he’s trying to act casual as to make her feel better, less tense because it _isn’t as bad as she thinks it is._ But it doesn’t work at all. If anything, it just makes her more frustrated.

“You call _this_ fine?!” She almost very nearly shouts, gesturing sharply with her free hand over to his bed, over his injured body. Roxy dips her head, accusingly, adding, “You call _any_ of that _fine,_ Eggsy?!”

He sighs at that and lolls his neck, lazily. “Quit being so _dramatic_ , Rox. This ain’t as bad as it looks, you know.”

“ _Oh_ ,” Her voice is stiff as she resumes work on the stitching. She pricks the needle into his skin once more and threads it through, throat feeling tight, as she mutters to herself, “ _Forgive me for caring_...”

Unfortunately for her, he hears that. Hissing sharply from the sting, he lets out a breath, “What are you so _afraid_ of?” He asks, shaking his head, but careful to not move anything else. “I know how to handle myself.”

“I know you do...” Roxy quiets herself with a sigh. She doesn’t look up at him, just tries to focus her hardest on threading through the final suture properly. But it’s a struggle, because now, for some reason, her hands have begun to shake slightly. She hates when this happens, when it all gets the best of her. Taking a deep breath, Roxy tries to steady them the best she can without accidentally prodding him and without letting him notice. “But it doesn’t mean you should keep taking all those _unnecessary_ risks. What happens when your luck runs out?”

“That could happen to anyone, you know.”

His eyes drop to her hands, where he can see them shake. The look he gives her after confirms that.

“I don’t care about anyone else’s luck, Eggsy.” Roxy says, trying her hardest not to wobble her words.

“Listen, Rox,” he begins, his voice all quiet and gentle now. He moves his head forward, nearer to her. “Even the best laid plans can go to shit.” He pauses and tries to search her face before he continues, “And Rox, when that happens, you don’t really have much choice but to figure it out on your feet, you know what I mean?”  

“But you _never_ plan _anything_ at all!” Roxy says, much louder than she would’ve liked. Her throat tightens even more as she speaks, when all she begins to see in her mind’s eye is him when things go sour. It takes everything in her to steady her voice, to keep herself cool, but nothing works. Everything that had been boiling up to that moment had begun to spill out. “You just go... _headfirst_ into everything! Even _you_ know the drawbacks to that.”

For a moment, he says nothing. She watches him gulp before he opens his mouth to speak. Despite how she was, Eggsy remained cool – gentle, even. And _God_ , she thinks, _that just makes this worse_. He gives her a small smile, but it just looks sad. “But that’s why you and I make such a good team.”

Roxy scoffs at that, breathlessly, and looks down to the white, linoleum floor. “ _Christ_ , Eggsy,” she whispers as she reaches for the scissors on the tray beside her. “It’s why I started getting grey hairs at twenty-three.”

Eggsy takes another pause. Roxy cuts the thread and puts the scissors away before reaching for the roll of bandages beside it. She doesn’t look back up at him in their silence, but she can feel his eyes on her, softly evaluating her the way he does sometimes. She has to take another deep breath to keep herself even.

“Does it really bother you that much?” He finally asks, another whisper.

Roxy rolls the bandages around his bicep and fixes it in place. Glancing up at him for a moment, she says nothing, at first. Instead, she rolls back in her chair and over to the bin, where she snaps off her rubber gloves and disposes of them into the metal tin. _Yes_ , she wants to say. Almost does say. _It does_. Well and truly.

But she says nothing, despite having thought she would by the time she rolled over back to his bedside.

“Roxy...” His voice is low and quiet as he tilts his head to the side. He moves so he can be closer to her, and so he can catch her gaze. But he can’t. Not really. She can feel his eyes on her, still, all soft and comforting but all it leaves her with is a weighty feeling in the middle of her chest. “Tell me what this is really about.”

It takes her a few moments to gather enough will to finally say something. It hurts – saying the words _hurt_ but she knows she has to say them; knows that sooner or later, she’d have to speak and give him a proper answer. A bitter taste fills her mouth as she speaks, and she can practically taste the burning brandy in the back of her throat. “I don’t _ever..._ want to come in one day and have to drink a toast in your honour. I couldn’t—”

“— _Hey_...” he cuts her off with a slight, breathless chuckle, and she can feel his breath against her dipped forehead. The warmth sends a tingle through her, a shiver that she tries to cover up. “Who said anything about that? Look, neither of us can promise that there won’t ever be a day when we’ll have to drink a toast to the other, because there will be. But, as far as I’m concerned, we owe it to each other to trust that we’ll both do our best to make sure that day doesn’t come too soon, or happen at all, you know what I mean?”

Roxy gulps, murmuring. “Yeah,” she nods, “I do.”  

“And besides,” he adds, moving his arm away from the arm rest to place a hand on her back for comfort. Her eyes move up to his when she feels his hand on her. “Merlin wouldn’t _ever_ let me hear the end of it if I died. Knowing him, he’d probably find a way to give me a lecture, even in the sodding _afterlife_.”

“That’s—” Roxy nearly trips over her words. She gulps. “That’s _n-not_ funny, Eggsy.”

He scrunches his nose at that, and the surrounding skin wrinkles. He tilts his head to the side and dips his head forward slightly, twisting his lips. “It is a _bit_ , though, innit?”

Roxy looks back down at her lap, tiredly, and fiddles with her watch to distract herself. In any other circumstance, she may have found that joke funny – no, she _knew_ she would, because that sounds like something Merlin would _definitely_ do, and especially to Eggsy. But right now, she wasn’t in the mood for it. She wasn’t in the mood to hear about him dying, even in a hypothetical way; as a lame joke.

“ _Rox_...” Her ears burn slightly at the mention of her name, but she still doesn’t look up at him. Her eyes stay on her lap, where she fiddles with the leather of her Kingsman watch. When she does nothing, says nothing, he says her name again, a little more imploringly. “ _Rox_...” He repeats, and suddenly, she feels his fingers under her chin, guiding her face so he can finally get a good look at her. “Will you look at me?”  

For a while, he says nothing else but look at her, his green eyes roaming all around as he takes her all in. Her mind is far too hazy for her to be able to read him, to gauge what he’s thinking. Part of her wonders if he’s starting to realise something, to suspect something else – that there’s more to this than it seems.

“Listen, I know I talk a load of bollocks most of the time,” he begins, “but I want you to believe me when I say this, yeah?” He presses his lips together before he firmly tells her, “I _ain’t_... goin’ anywhere.”

The breath she releases after that is a shaky shudder. And despite wanting to say something, she just can’t find herself able to – can’t find the words, or the strength.

All she really wants in that moment is for him to take her in his arms – for her to rest her head against his chest and to feel that warmth of his as he presses her against him, his arms wrapping around her shoulders and keeping her steady. If he could only just hold her until it felt better, until she began to believe he wouldn’t leave.

But she didn’t get that.

Hearing his voice again in her ears snaps her out of her thoughts and brings her back into reality. When she looks back at him, she notices his face is slightly closer than it had been before. “Like it or not,” he says, and she can hear the playfulness returning to his voice. She feels his hand begin to move in circles around her back as he speaks, and the warmth of his palm radiates through her clothes and onto her skin. “But this ugly bastard ain’t going anywhere any time soon.”

Roxy snorts softly as she tucks her shoulders in, her voice gentle. “You’re not an ugly bastard, Eggsy.”

He shrugs at that and smiles at her – one of those lazy, half-smiles he knows she loves. She bites down on her lip to stop herself from smiling back at him, because _God_ , he knew just what to do, what to say, to make things seem better – even if it was just a little bit. She both _loved_ and _hated_ that about him. He inches closer.

“Maybe. But these bruises and cuts sure aren’t doing me _any_ favours.”

“I’m sure someone will one day come along and look past all that...”

He beams, softly. “Someone for everyone, ain’t that it?”

“Yeah,” the word is so quiet that she nearly doesn’t hear it herself. She pauses for a moment to look all over his face before she adds, just as softly, “That’s the saying...”

His smile softens even more, as though that’s even possible at that point. “I ain’t goin’ anywhere...” he repeats, like he’s trying to make her believe him – _truly_ believe him.

There’s a part of her that does believe him, now. And there’s another that thinks otherwise. But there’s another that’s thinking of something else entirely. _He’s so close to me_ , she finally realises. The whole time they’d been speaking, Eggsy had been slowly inching closer and closer to her, and she didn’t quite know why. But _why_ wasn’t the most important thing on her mind in that moment.

Rather, the most important thing was how he was looking at her, all soft and welcoming and comforting, and how that made her feel – how that sent a wave of warmth over her. The most important thing to her was how, with him being this close to her, she could feel his breath against her skin. With him this close, she can feel the heat of him, radiating between them and sending a shiver down her spine.

The feeling returns – the feeling she’d known on and off for years. Before, it would often hit her when she least expected it, and it would stun her, leave her dazed like she’d just been punched in the gut. But now, it felt different. Looking at him now, at him like this, the feeling creeps in slowly, but naturally, as though it were a wave seeping onto the shoreline, returning with an ease.

Is he looking at her like this because he can feel it, too? Is he looking at her like this because he wants to kiss her as much as she wants to kiss him? Does he want her to make the first move, because he wasn’t sure if he could?

Does it mean anything at all?

The most important question, she thinks, is probably, is she willing to let this moment slip, like all the others?

 _No_ , she answers. She doesn’t want to let this one go. She’d spent the last five years letting each moment slip. She’d spent five years deep in doubt and convincing herself that this wasn’t what she should do. _Follow your heart in every other circumstance except this one, because this is different – it’s different with him._

She’d spent five years keeping everything in, and all it did was break her heart each and every time she had to. It was all so much different when they were twenty-two. It was different when they were training because the possibility of them staying friends afterwards was unlikely, so it was safe, almost, because she convinced herself she didn’t have to bother with it, because it was fleeting. But it wasn’t. She knows that now.

It was different when they were twenty-two because, back then, she thought everything she felt boiled down to nothing more than a simple crush, or even a meaningless attraction for superficial reasons, and that those things wouldn’t ever turn into anything more serious.

But they aren’t twenty-two anymore. And it’s different, now.

They’re twenty-seven now, and the longer she waited, the realer it became. The longer she let this sit, the more intense and scarier it became, because she knew that the longer she waited, the deeper she would sink.

The longer she waited, the harder it would be to finally let him know.

Was she prepared to hit thirty without having done anything? Was she willing to live the rest of her life like this – constantly hiding from the most important person in her life? Was she ready to live the rest of her life on the sidelines, never knowing what it was like to be with him, or to have him love her the way she wanted him to?

Was she ready to live her life, possibly, with the wrong person, because she didn’t know when to take a reckless risk like he would? Was she prepared to give herself entirely to the misery of silence?

She wasn’t ready to do any of that. She was so tired of waiting, of holding it all back, of having to watch.

So, she finally does something about it. Shoving her way past the barrier that’s been holding her back for half a decade, she closes the gap between them both and presses her lips against his. Despite the slight swell on the corner of his bottom lip, the kiss is soft, and the softness of it makes her toes curl in her leather shoes.

He makes a surprised sound and stiffens when she does kiss him, and that’s when she realises she’s made a mistake. Her eyes fly open, and a moment later, she pulls away from him. He stares at her, his previously bright eyes now totally unreadable, and he lets his mouth fall open slightly. Roxy gapes back at him, horrified by what she’s just done – absolutely _mortified_ now when it sinks in just how much of a bloody mistake that was.

“ _Fuck_...” Roxy shudders, quietly, and now she’s close to tears. _That was a mistake._ A monumental error.

 _Fuck_. Maybe it would’ve been better had she’d done nothing. Who knows, maybe she could’ve handled never telling him. Maybe, with a bit more time, she could find someone else; find someone else who makes her feel as good as he makes her feel, because surely, he can’t be the _only_ person who can make her feel this way?

_Right?_

Had she’d only kept listening to her head, and not her heart, she wouldn’t have ever found herself in this position.

Had she’d only been listening to her head, and not her heart, she wouldn’t have just ruined this thing they have.

“Ro—” He begins.

But she cuts him off, trying to think of ways she can get herself out of this situation entirely, how to escape. Her eyes dart all over the room, never landing on his, because she knew that if she looked at him, she’d spill even more. “— _Eggsy_ , I’m sorry. _Fuck_. I shouldn’t have done that. Fuck. I’m _so_ sorry. _Shit_!”

Her mind goes a million miles a minute as she tries to think of a way out. She just wants to leave completely, right then and there, wants to jump from her chair and make her way to the door; to create as much distance between them as she possibly could. And she even goes to try – but he stops her halfway, before she can move too far from him, by taking a hold of her hand. The feeling of his hand against hers makes her stop in place and close her eyes, her back turned away from him.

“Hey,” she hears him say, and to her, his voice seems so far away, like a whisper – though, he’d have to reason to; it was just them in there, all alone. Roxy’s throat tightens when he adds, “Please stop walking away.”

Her breath is unsteady. She still can’t find the strength, the resolve, to turn and look him in the eye, like she knows he deserves. That’s all been torn down now, just as she was beginning to think all of that had been rebuilt. A sob nearly bubbles out from her lips at the softness of his words, at the earnestness of it; like there was something behind it, and that—whatever it was—he really meant it. But she stops the sob from spilling out with the back of her hand, pressing it firmly against her twisting lips as she tries to hold it in, to hold it all in, like she’s been doing so meticulously the last five years.

“Roxy...” Her name from his lips is more like a quiet shudder, and it makes her close her eyes again. She doesn’t know what it’s for, or what he means, what he’s going to do next. Not knowing what would happen next, or what she could do, was always the worst part of anything. Her chin wobbles when she hears her name from him again, and it’s even softer this time, a comforting call for her to return to him, but it makes her feel worse.

“Please, look at me.” He begs, quietly.

But she can’t. Her will and resolve lay in a rubble by her feet and yet she’s still holding on, holding onto whatever she can get her hands on that could help her win this fight of hers, of theirs. There’s a part of her that thinks this could be it, the moment she’s been wanting for years – the moment when he looks her in the eye and tells her that he wants her, too, that he’s felt what she has for years; that he’s been in just as much pain for years.

But there’s another that can’t help but project the doomsday scenario against her still-closed eyelids – that shows her the awkward silences and the tension-filled meetings; that shows her the avoiding one another as much as professionally possible, the eventual end to hanging out, or talking to each other, or being there for one another; that shows her it all building and building until one of them explodes and leaves and then that would be it – the end of the era. The most important parts of their lives so far closed shut like a finished book never to be reopened, the happily never after, and all because she didn’t know how to move on from him properly.

She’s tried for years to move on, and with so many people.

But she never could, really.

She finds herself dragged back into the present when she feels his fingers moving against the back of her hand, and it’s like a jolt of electricity coursing through her. The pads of his fingers are rough against her much softer skin, but the gesture is comforting. And somewhere in her, she knows that he’s doing that on purpose, because he knows how much she likes this. Is he coaxing her back, she wonders, the only way he knows how?

She shudders again and looks up to the celling, not caring about the stark, bright light overhead blinding her. His fingers still move against her hand, wiping across her sticky skin in a war-like effort to get her to come back to him. All she would need to do is cut that final string holding her back, and in theory, it would be easy enough. Straining under the weight of it all those past few years, she knew it wouldn’t take much more for it to buckle and sever forever. But she had too much at stake, too much that she couldn’t bear to lose if it all went sour.

So she swallows her pride, like a giant rock in her throat, and tries to rebuild, to find a way out of this. But then she feels Eggsy’s hand tugging hers gently, as though wordlessly asking for her to turn around already, to go back to him. He runs his thumb over the skin again, giving her a slight squeeze, and all her efforts fall apart, slipping through her fingers like water. And she could sob again—nearly does—but she holds that in, too.

She holds it all in, still, even though he’s giving her the signal to let go, that it’s okay to because it’s just them in there. But she still holds onto whatever she can, latches herself onto whatever’s left in her that helps her fight.

Eggsy tugs at her hand again, and for whatever reason, she finds herself taking two steps back towards him – though, still turned away from him. _One thing at a time_ , she thinks. With her now closer to him, his fingers move from her hand upwards – to her wrist at first, where he then traces upwards. His fingers curl around her forearm, all soft and questing, moving gently upwards and then down, and then again. Before, his touch had always felt like fire, like wherever he touched her left a blazing trail of burns behind it, but now she just felt like an exposed wire in water – his fingers leaving a trail of dull electricity behind them.

It was so tender, so unlike anything he’s ever given her before in all those years that she now can’t help but turn to him. Not too much, though. She only turns her head slightly to the side, just so she would be able to see him in her peripheral vision. And what she sees is him smiling at her, a tiny little smile that she can’t tell is one he’s only giving her to make her feel less embarrassed or if it’s something else entirely. Despite the cuts and odd bruise on his face, his features are just as tender and gentle as his touches. His green eyes are soft and pleading, because he’s trying so hard to find her eyes, but she doesn’t let him.

She feels like she’s suffocating in there, but part of her doesn’t want to leave – the part of her that wants to stay there with him, his fingers and hands never leaving her skin.

 _Eggsy Unwin is all heart_ , she thinks, miserably, and has been his whole life. Underneath the bravado and the hardness of his features – underneath it _all_ – he was all heart. The world had tried to take that away from him his whole life; had tried to get under his skin and stamp on it until it was nothing left but a crushed organ on the pavement, bleeding out until there was nothing left in him. But he never let it, even when every odd was against him, he never stopped being soft, never stopped being kind and gentle with the ones he loved.

And _God_ , he loved her. Part of her was beginning to realise that from the way he’s holding her now.

He loved her, in whatever way that happened to be, in every sense of the word. And she loved him, too, in every way she let herself be capable of. In her heart she knew that, whatever happened, they’d be okay – that if this does really go south, they loved each other enough in their own ways to make the friendship keep working.

But her brain still argued, gave her all the facts and the figures needed to make her want to hold off on telling him for even longer, to push it back a little further. If only she could just kiss him again. Kissing him felt good.

Eggsy’s hands and fingers fall away from her arm, and she finds herself quickly missing the feeling. She clocks a glance over to the door, and it’s still closed. With him having let go, she could leave, if she really needed to, if she wanted to. But she didn’t want to. Despite her brain screaming at her that leaving was the best thing to do in that moment, that it was the only hope she had left at not losing everything right then and there, she stayed.

“Are you going to stay?” She hears Eggsy ask from behind her.

“I don’t know yet.”

He chortles, and tries to joke. “She speaks...”

Roxy releases the breath she didn’t realise she’d been holding in when she hears that. “Please don’t joke right now, Eggsy.” She begs, almost desperately. Jokes were the last things she needed.

“Sorry,” he murmurs before he pauses. But then after a while, he asks, “Are you going to ever sit back down?”

“I don’t know if I want to.”

“You can’t just stand there forever, Rox, you know that, right?”  

She closes her eyes briefly, taking a breath, before opening them again. “Yes, I know that.”  

Eggsy reaches out to her again, and goes to hold her hand properly. He squeezes it gently in his, making her breath hitch in her throat, and says, “Then sit back down with me. I wanna talk to you.”

“I know what you’re gonna say,” She blurts out, and it’s quiet enough that she thinks he won’t be able to hear it. “I don’t think I want to hear it.”

But he does. And then she feels him guiding her hand to his mouth, where he presses a soft kiss onto the skin. His lips linger for a few moments, but to her, it seems like a lifetime until he lowers her hand away and says, “Just sit back down with me, yeah? Please, Rox?”

She still doesn’t move, although she wants to, more than anything, and it’s not until she hears Eggsy grumbling in pain, rustling sounds, and until she feels his hands on her hips to guide her around that she finally does turn to him. When she finally faces him, he lets go and settles back in his seat, nodding his head wordlessly to her old seat, gesturing for her to sit down.

And finally, she does what he tells her to do. With her eyes lowered, she walks over to the seat and sits down in it. They both sit there in silence for a while, with Eggsy watching her with those soft, patient eyes of his and Roxy with her eyes down to her lap, where they focus on the stiches of her trousers to keep her occupied.

Eggsy decides to have the first word. “What are you thinking about?”

And at that, Roxy just purses her lips and gives him a tiny shrug. She still hasn’t looked up at him, so she can’t read him. She’s not sure she even wants to at this point. “Nothing.”

“Do you want to talk about that kiss?”

“Not really.”

“Well, we can’t just avoid talking about it forever.”

“We can try.”

Eggsy grumbles as he leans over to her, trying to push past the pain in his ribs. She turns her head slightly, just to see a bit of him, and catches him watching her with an imploring look on his face, like he’s begging for her to talk to him, to get _anything_ out of her. “What was it for? The kiss – what was it for, Rox?”

“Heat of the moment, I guess,” she murmurs, quietly, looking back down at her lap. _That’s half-true, at least_. She flattens the fabric of her trousers down with her palms. “It wasn’t for anything.”

“No, no, don’t do that,” he says, with a sternness to it amongst all the gentleness. He reaches out and grabs a hold of her chin, guiding her gaze to his. She finally looks up at him, and finds his eyes practically digging into her, seeing right through her, through all the crap. “Closing yourself off ain’t gonna do you any good, Rox.”

Roxy lowers her eyes at that and lets out another shaky breath because she knows he’s right. He’s always bloody right about these things. She’s dreamt of telling him how she feels for years, designed the perfect way she’d let him know, and how he’d react, just as perfectly in her mind. But now that she was there, in the very moment she’s dreamt of countless times, the delight’s slipped away, replaced now with only a nauseating dullness and an overwhelming desire to run away from him completely, from the whole bloody thing.

“ _Roxy_...” Her name drags, cautiously, and she looks back at him, finally finds the strength to. He blinks a few times, and curls his lips inwards for a moment before he continues with an unsureness in his voice. “I know we joke about it heaps, but after that kiss, Rox, I have to ask – do you actually fancy me? And no bullshit, yeah?”

 _No bullshit._ His question fills her entire body with an unimaginably painful dread. _Shouldn’t it feel better than this?_ It felt better in her dreams, felt easier, and in her head, being able to say the words to him came as easily and smoothly as falling silk. But now she feels like she’s tip-toeing on burning rocks, all tongue-tied and like if she made one misstep that it would all be over – the book would close shut, forever. The end of their era.

_No bullshit._

She doesn’t know what to tell him. If she tells him, she runs the risk of having to deal with the soul-crushing, _‘I’m sorry, but I don’t feel the same,’_ talk but if she gets up and leaves – which she wanted to do the most – then the very action would speak for her, would let him know that she _does_ and just can’t face it, and eventually she knew she’d have to. If she told him she doesn’t, to not flatter himself that she’d ever be interested in _him_ , then she knew he wouldn’t buy it, that he could see through all that bravado just as easily as she can see through his.

Any and every attempt would have been a hopeless one. And she knew all of them would lead to the same end.

Maybe she should just do it, just say it and see what happens, what she’s left with. She’s a grown woman, and she knew that she could handle it, whatever the consequences may be. She was strong enough to keep moving.

But the thing is, she more than fancies him. In the beginning she just fancied him – fancied the look of him and the oddly fascinating danger surrounding him; fancied how he made her feel wild and carefree; fancied how, with him, she didn’t know all the answers, and that was thrilling, that was okay. But sometimes these things change. It was a gradual process that not even she noticed until it was too late; until she blinked and one day found herself stuck in the very thick of it, head over heels for the man underneath the bomber jackets and the suits; the man only a select few had seen, were lucky enough to _ever_ see. The man she couldn’t help but fall in love with completely and utterly the moment he revealed himself to her.

_No bullshit._

“Yes,” She finally says, biting the bullet. Her whole body trembles slightly when she says the word, when the realisation finally sinks in that now, he knows, that there’s nowhere else to go, nothing more to hold in. She wonders if he can see her trembling, if he’s going to do anything about it, what he’s going to say.

If only she could tell him the truth, the whole truth – that she loved him, that she still loves him, even after all these years, after everything they’ve been through and everyone they’ve been with; that she’s not sure she ever entirely stopped. If only she could tell him, because loving someone was different to her than just fancying them. But she had no clue where that would lead her, how he’d handle it, because his luck with relationships and love hadn’t been the best those past few years. She knew that too well – she was there, after all, to watch the rise and fall of them all, and to see the states they left him in.

She couldn’t help but wonder – was he _really_ ready to hear her say that she loved him, more than anything else?

He had asked her for no bullshit, but whether he could handle it or not was another thing entirely.  

“Oh, _Roxy_ ,” is all he says at first, with a slight breathless chuckle. She looks up at him, brows furrowed, thinking he’s going to laugh at her for it, laugh in her face, but then she sees one of his hands moving from the arm rest to her jaw, where he takes a hold of her face. “Oh, _Rox_...” he repeats, softer this time, running his thumb over her cheek. He shakes his head slightly, his hair having had broken free of the gel and moving along with him, “Why didn’t you say anything earlier?”

“How the hell do you even bring something like that _up_?”

His eyes wander all over her face, like he’s soaking her all in. He tilts his head slightly, dipping his head forward towards hers, voice still quiet, “How long have you felt like that?”

Despite wanting to tell him the truth, despite wanting to tell him how much she loves him, how she has for years and years, the thought of actually telling him in reality sends a sickening feeling over her. His expression is still a soft one, and the way he looks at her now, all patient like he is, makes the feeling even more overwhelming to her. If only she could escape.

During her silence, she begins to feel his thumb moving against her skin again, as though silently coaxing her into continuing for him, that it’s okay to. Her skin tingles where he touches her, and she swallows hard before she finds the strength to push the words out. “Years,” she admits, finally finding her voice, and his thumb stops moving across her cheek. His mouth parts in surprise, but she continues, anyway, “Ever since we were at training together.”

“Oh, Roxy...” is all he says, again, like that’s all he can say. And it drives her up the wall. She wants him to say something, whether that’s him saying he fancies her, too, or that he doesn’t. Anything would’ve been better than the same thing over and over. “Oh, _Rox_...” He repeats with a sigh, and the words sound like a quiet prayer.

On the very verge of tears, she manages to grit out, “Can you please _stop_ saying that?”

He pauses at that, as though carefully deciding what he should say next. “You do remember that time a couple of years ago when I took you to that pub, yeah?”

Her chin wobbles and wrinkles as she cracks a slight smile. And all of a sudden, her eyes are filled to the brim with tears. She doesn’t let any spill out, though. “That shitty one in South-East London?”

His mouth opens fully in his surprise, his pink lips curling into a delighted, fake-hurt ‘O’ shape. “ _Oi_!” He says, unable bite back his smile as he leans in closer. “That’s one of my favourite pubs, you know?”

“I know,” she sighs, and the feeling of him being this close to her again makes her cheeks warm, makes it feel like a wave is washing over her. She bites back her own, small smile, lips twisting. “Doesn’t mean it wasn’t shit.”

Eggsy shakes his head, his eyes sparkling. “Well, you know, not everyone had access to country clubs growing up, Rox.”

She finds herself laughing at that, her shoulders tucked in but moving along. “Don’t be a dickhead.” She bites her lower lip to stop herself from grinning completely. “Did you have a point to this, Eggsy?”

“Yeah,” he says, lowering his voice. He swallows, and the sight of his Adam’s apple bopping catches her eye. “I was getting there. You remember when we got pissed, and you told me about your thing for mouths? I accused you of fancying me and you got all flustered and embarrassed. Do you remember that?”  

She shakes her head and rolls her eyes. “Yeah, I remember that. Your point being?”

“My _point_ is... I wasn’t lying when I said that it was okay. It was okay then and it’s okay now.”

Her eyes narrow on him slightly at that. She tilts her head to the side, searching his face. She doesn’t quite know what he means by that, what he really means. His face is unreadable, too. She can’t pull anything out of his expression alone, making figuring out how to move next a complete mystery. “What are you trying to say?”

“I’m trying to _say_...” he pauses, licking his lips before continuing, “...that you’ve got nothing to worry about.”

“Are you saying we should just drop this, then?” She asks, softly. “Forget this ever happened and move on?”

“If—” he tries to find the right words to say, but then he settles with, “—if you want to, we can.”

Roxy gulps, and pushing the words up from her throat seems to her, then, like the hardest thing she’s ever had to do. “You still haven’t told me how you feel yet.”

He pauses at that. It’s a lengthy pause that makes her stomach churn more and more the longer it goes on. Her chest feels tight, but then she feels his thumb beginning to stroke against her cheeks again, and the knots slowly but surely ease up. He looks at her with those small, green eyes of his, all soft and looking deep into hers. She doesn’t know what comes next, what he’s thinking, what she should do.

She can feel his uncertainty by his hand, the way he’s holding her and the unsteady breathing. She doesn’t know if that’s from his injuries or because of this, the circumstance they find themselves in now. It feels like he’s holding something back, making sure it doesn’t slip.

Does he feel the same for her? Can he feel what she does? Could he have held back just as much?

“I don’t know if it even matters anymore,” Eggsy finally says, and it’s a whisper. His breath hits her face warmly as he speaks. Despite them being merely inches apart, she almost doesn’t pick it up fully, but she does.

Roxy takes a gentle hold of his wrist and finds herself leaning more into his touch. “Of course it matters.”

“I thought you said you didn’t want to hear what I had to say.”

“I want to, now,” she tells him, nodding. “I _need_ to know.”

Eggsy purses his lips, and she can still feel his uncertainty. He lets out a shudder, an uneven shaky breath that tells her almost everything. Before she can say more, or before he could say anything himself properly, she finds him leaning in – and it’s in that moment when he decides to tell her the only way, she thinks, he knows how.   

His lips are warm and damp as they press softly against hers, slightly hesitant and careful, as though trying to find the right way. The feeling goes straight to her head, making her feel woozy and lightheaded, but he keeps her steady with his hand. His fingers slip into her light brown hair, curling around the nape of her neck as he tilts his head to kiss her from another angle, their noses bumping as they move. He smiles slightly when their noses bump, and when their lips reconnect a moment later, she hears him release a quiet, desperate hum; can even feel it rumbling into her mouth. She lets one out herself, a tiny little moan as she soaks in the feeling of his lips against hers for real this time.

Kissing him like this is better than anything she’s ever dreamt, better than anything she’s capable of coming up with herself.

She’d be lying if she said she didn’t want to climb beside him in his chair and kiss him some more, to lay beside him and keep their mouths locked like this for longer, moving against one another at their own pace, his arm curled around her shoulders and hers draped over his middle until they were both breathless from all the kissing, and bright pink.  

But the bed wasn’t big enough for them both. And he was still injured. Last thing she wanted was to hurt him.

Roxy runs her hand up and down the arm that’s holding her face as they kiss, her own little way of wordlessly telling him that this was okay because the last thing she wanted was for them to stop. She can feel the goose-bumps along his skin as she moves her hand, can feel the upright hairs, and it makes her smile into his mouth, because it’s as good for him as it is for her. She never wants this to stop, not even if the world was falling around their ears. But for a moment, they pull away, just barely an inch so they could catch their breaths again, but it isn’t long until she sees Eggsy dipping back in, his tongue quickly darting out some as he presses a kiss against her bottom lip, and then her top.  

The feeling of his tongue makes her toes curl inwards in her shoes again, her breathing unsteady. She tries to focus – to focus on kissing him properly and making sure she’s not suffocating herself because all she can think about is kissing him more and more and more. Just like the kiss itself, the feeling of his damp tongue against her mouth is better than anything she had ever imagined before, and it sends shivers down her spine, and even makes her release a tiny, quiet moan.

Her cheeks are surely flushed, she thinks, and her shoulders and her chest and probably the rest of her. She wonders if he’s the same, if she’s making such an impact on him as he is to her. She wants to think so.

Despite being perfectly happy to kiss him for hours, they find themselves stopping once more. He pulls away, the skin of their lips splitting apart slowly as he moves back. He playfully bumps his nose against hers, brushing it from side to side before she sees him peeking up at her through his eyelashes, his eye-lids heavy and with a slight, open-mouthed smile on his face.

“Does that tell you everything?” He asks, the skin next to his mouth wrinkling as he smiles at her.

She can’t quite answer him right away. He’s left her in a haze, stunned, even. Roxy closes her eyes for a moment, and lets out a quiet sigh before she opens them back up again, seeing that he’s still got his eyes on her, a hopefulness to them that tugs at her heart and makes her want to kiss him all over again. Instead, she speaks, “That was...” another sigh, “... _definitely_ something, that’s for sure.”

The corners of his eyes crinkle in delight at her answer. “I figured you’d like that answer the best.”

“Well,” she says, with a twist of her lips and a smile, “you certainly know me best, don’t you?”

The look of joy on his face only increases. He leans their forwards together, skin against skin, and the feeling makes her sigh again. Eggsy hums in agreement. “You bet I do.”

They stay like this for a while, forehead-to-forehead, and not saying much else. They just wanted to enjoy each other’s company, to soak in this moment for as long as they could, because _anything_ could go wrong and break this whole thing – someone could walk in on them and cut this short, which was the last thing either for them wanted. They just wanted to enjoy this a little longer, that’s all.

Had Eggsy looked at her like this before, and for this long, Roxy wouldn’t have been able to deal with it. The prolonged tenderness would’ve eventually become too much and she’d find herself pulling away from him, like she did sometimes when things got too heavy between them, too real in this sense. But she hasn’t done that, yet. Instead, she looks right back at him, with the same gentle and tender look because she’s _happy_ this has happened, that this is the outcome.

It feels good. It feels right. It feels _normal._  

For the first time in her life, this kind of thing feels _right_ and _easy._ For the first time ever since she first met him, all those years ago when the first seed was planted inside her, it feels like all that weight holding her back, all that worry, has seeped away completely, its absence neither really noted nor cared about. With them like this, she finds everything leaking away into nothingness – the room they find themselves in, the supply tray beside her, the quiet sounds from outside the door where life still goes on – until there’s nothing left in that room but him and her, like this, at last.

The final string holding her back finally severed.

But, slowly, she finds his smile faltering, and the look in his eyes becomes what she can only describe as a soft sadness. In them, she can see the hints of uncertainty still there, still clinging onto him like they’d done with her for years. She knows that look. She’s had that look. That’s the look she’s given him before. For the first time in a while, she finally understands what’s going on in that head of his.

_What if he wants to stop this?_

Eggsy’s mouth opens, but he barely gets out a syllable before he closes it back up again.

“What is it?” Roxy asks, the words sounding more like a desperate, urgent plea than a neutral question. She begins to rub up and down his arm, coaxing him like he had done to her earlier.

His struggle and worry is palpable to her, because she’s seen it all before, felt it all before. She can feel the heavy tugging he feels, the uncertainty creeping in, the anxiety of not knowing what would happen next, if it’s worth it. The air is thick, like you could slice it in two, and all she wanted to do in that moment was to know how to make it all better for him, how to take all that doubt and worry from him. Not knowing what to do, despite having had it for years herself, nearly broke her heart.

_No bullshit. No more bullshit. Not ever again._

As though a final resort, she leans forward and kisses him again – softly taking his top lip between hers. She places only the one kiss on his lips before she pulls away from him to see his reaction. His eyes are still closed by the time she opens hers, and don’t open for a while. It looks like he’s in a haze himself, like she’d been in earlier.

“ _Rox..._ ” Eggsy sighs, sounding like he’s in pain, like it’s a strain.

“What is it?” She repeats, quietly. “Tell me what’s wrong.”

Eggsy purses his lips instead of answering her question, pressing them into a tight, flat line that turns his light pink lips nearly white. As though on auto-pilot, Roxy goes to rub his arm again, up and down, slowly and gently. She can feel the goose-bumps forming on his skin again in her finger’s wake.

“I’ve got something to tell you,” he finally says, dropping his eyes and disconnecting their foreheads.

Her stomach drops, heart tugs. She swallows and despite wanting to look away, she keeps her eyes on him. It’s funny to her how that _now,_ it’s _her_ trying to catch his gaze, and not the other way around. Roxy just wanted him to look at her, so much so that it began to _hurt_ and ache dully in her chest.

_Was this what it felt like with him when I did this?_

She wonders if this is it. If this is the moment when he finally tells her how he feels.

 _Or_ if it’s the moment when he tells her that, despite how he feels, he couldn’t do this, wasn’t willing to try and make it work because he knew all too well how these things ended.

To him, they must all end the same way, so what was even the point of trying anymore?

Her voice is barely audible. “You know you can tell me anything.”

“This is _different_ ,” he says, still quiet but no less firm. She can feel him hardening back up again, retreating back into his shell because he doesn’t want to get hurt, despite how much he actually does want this. He’s lived long enough, been with enough people, to know that in the end, all he gets is hurt – no matter how many times he tries to convince himself otherwise.

 _Christ_ , the last thing she wants is to hurt him. How could she show him that? How could she make him believe?

Roxy purses her lips together and leans her forehead back onto his. “Look at me,” she says, a gentle command that he obeys. She can see the struggle in his eyes even more; see him torn between wanting to look at her and wanting to look away. She wanted nothing more in that moment but to know how to make all of that go away – but how? “Tell me what’s wrong.”

He lowers his head slightly, dropping his gaze. “I just wanna tell you something, that’s all.”

Roxy takes a gentle hold of his chin and guides his head back up to level with hers, the same thing he’d done to her all those other times before. “Then _tell me_ , Eggsy...” Roxy urges.

He looks at her for a few moments, looking like he’s on the verge of speaking, but he never does. Instead, he lets out a breathless, half-chuckle and averts his eyes from hers again. “Fucking _hell,_ ” he murmurs with a self-deprecating twist to his voice, and she _swears_ she can see his eyes watering, but he never gives her the chance to see for sure. “I thought this would be easier with you.”  

The tone to his voice strikes a heavy chord in her, and she just wants to kiss him again, as though that would make him feel better, would make it easier. But she didn’t know if that was appropriate now or not. Instead of kissing him like she wants to, she lifts his head up again by the chin, and gives him a warm look – the most comforting one she could must with all the anxiety she was feeling.

“What would be easier?” Roxy asks, although part of her may have already known the answer. She manages a smile. “Whatever it is, I know you can tell me. No bullshit, remember?”

At her words, something cracks on his face, but just barely – the tiniest of twitches by the right corner of his mouth... a detail easily missed by anyone else who didn’t know what to look for, who didn’t know him like she did. But that was the thing – she wasn’t anyone else.

“No bullshit,” he echoes softly, with a slight nod. He pauses before saying anything else. His eyes are damp, like she thought, but he lets none of it spill. She hears him swallow, his Adam’s apple bopping visibly as he does so, before she feels his fingers move from the nape of her neck upwards, where she feels the rough pads gently rubbing against her scalp. He takes a final breath before he says anything else, before he pushes past the pent up fear and exposes himself entirely in front of her.

She nearly doesn’t hear him speak, nearly doesn’t catch the words croaking out from his throat and into her ears. But she does. That was the thing – anyone else would’ve missed him saying it.

But she was she, and he was he. So, she catches it.

“I love you...” Eggsy whispers, the words coming out all at once like a stream of consciousness. He shifts in his seat, uncomfortably because of his injuries, and tilts his head, his eyes on her and searching for something – a reaction, maybe. His chin crinkles, and an overwhelmed smile spills out onto his face. “Fuck, Rox, I think I always have.”

Her hands stop moving when he says that, when she finally hears from him, from his own mouth and in his own voice, all the things she’s wanted to hear for years, wanted to tell him herself. Still, she says nothing, despite wanting to, more than anything. If she weren’t already sitting down, she would’ve surely been knocked off her feet. His words have just left her in such a stunned haze.

Roxy doesn’t realise how much time she’s spent sitting there, doing and saying nothing, until she hears his voice again. “Fucking _hell,_ Rox,” he lets out another one of those, anxious breathless half-chuckles, and it looks like he’s trying to smile through the nerves. “Don’t leave a bloke hanging here.”

Nothing comes out, even still. Instead of speaking, she leans her forehead against his and lowers her eyes, as though that would tell him everything for her. But it doesn’t, really. Roxy can feel his eyes on her, trying to catch her gaze, this time.

Roxy just snorts quietly to herself, her cheeks flushing slightly, because to her, this whole thing seems so ridiculous. She never planned for this – to hear the words and then find herself unable to say anything back. She’s spent the last five years imagining this moment, agonising over it and every single micro-detail to make it as perfect in her mind as possible. She spent years imagining the feel of his lips against hers, how he liked to kiss; she spent years imagining how the words she so desperately wanted to hear would sound coming from his mouth; she spent years imagining the feel of him, in any way possible – and now that she was here, in that very moment, all she can do is smile at the floor and leave him agonising in front of her, hanging on every word.

Part of her feared that if she stayed quiet for any longer, that he’d be frustrated and leave, that he’d call this a mistake, a lapse in judgement, and storm off. Because there he was, opening his heart to her, and she couldn’t say anything back, only adding salt to his wounds.

And then that would be it. The end of... whatever this was, or could be.

All she could see, all she could think about, was the last few years, all distilled into a series of images. Those years of watching and waiting and wanting and getting nothing. She thought of those times when she caught herself watching him, doing whatever it was he was doing at the time, and getting stuck deep in her thoughts. She thought about all those touches and looks. She thought about all those sleepless nights, the tossing and turning in her bed, thinking about him from the day, or thinking about him with her. All those mornings when she woke up from a dream, swearing he was with her, but only to find a cold, unused space beside her where she sleepily reached out for the ghost of him. She thought about all those missions, all those close calls, when all she could think about was how she’d have to go to her grave with this, with him not knowing who he was to her, what he meant.

All those years of it churning and churning in her stomach, in her heart, and it’s all come to an end. It’s all been leading to this very moment – the moment she’d clung onto for strength for so many years.  

 _I love you, too_ , she wants to say, already. _I love you. I love you, I love you, I love you._ Again and again and again until he knows how true it is, how much she means it. _I love you,_ she wants to say, pressing a kiss against his lips. And another, and another, until she’s saying the words in-between each kiss, until he commits it to memory, until he never has a doubt about it in his mind. _I love everything about you. The good and the bad. All of it. I want all of it._

Roxy purses her lips into a tight, flat line and takes a deep, shaky breath before she gathers the will to.  

“I love you, too,” She croaks out, at last, the tears in her eyes finally spilling over when she says the words. But she doesn’t care about letting that show anymore, about letting that spill. She doesn’t have to hide anymore. And neither does he, because then she sees him releasing the breath he was holding and laughing, the tears in his eyes spilling over and down onto his cheeks, as well.

He smiles in disbelief, his green eyes sparkling like diamonds in the overhead light.

She’s never seen him like this before, so overcome with emotion. But he’s happy. It’s so clear to her that he is and part of her wants nothing more but to always make him this happy, this smiley.

His voice strained and thin as he pulls away slightly. “Yeah?” He asks, a little uncertain but he’s still smiling, a hopeful look on his face.

She exhales, but it comes out as a shaky laugh. “ _Yeah_!” She exclaims, her own smile growing along with his. Roxy wipes her eyes with her free hand and nods furiously before she begins to rub his arm again. “I do. _God_ , Eggsy, I do. _So much_. You have no idea.”

“Good,” he says with a firm nod, like he believes her, and smiles again. Releasing a shaky breath, Eggsy stares into her eyes again before quickly leaning forward, as though to kiss her again.

But before he can, a sharp pain shoots through them both. It seems that in his haste, he’s knocked their foreheads together, painfully, and bumped their noses. They both pull away, faces twisting in pain, but they’re laughing, anyway, watching each other with a smile.

“What’d you do that for?” Roxy asks, rubbing her forehead.

“I swear...” His eyes are closed as he tries to shake off the pain, “...I’m usually _much_ smoother than this.”

“Forgive me if I find that hard to believe.”

He snorts, quietly, and opens his eyes, a hopeful but cheeky nonetheless look in them. “Mind if I try again?”

And at that, Roxy just smiles back at him, pursing her lips together briefly before replying, quietly.

“As much as you’d like.”

**Author's Note:**

> Hello again! If you made it this far, then thank you! I hope you enjoyed the fic! I've been writing this since early/mid-December, so I'm glad it's finally all done now. Please leave a comment and/or a kudos if you enjoyed this -- you don't have to, but the feedback would be nice for any future stuff! And thanks for reading! X


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